“Magic mirror, on the wall”: who has the most likes at all?

Some days ago, Instagram launched a polemic measure for the platform in Brazil: the removal, for the followers, the information about the numbers of likes that a post receives. In practice, people do not see anymore the number from those they follow but keep having access to the number of likes received on their own posts.

What is the reasoning of the measure?

Since some time ago, the group headed by Marck Zuckberf manifests in the sense of promoting a friendly environment for the users to be together. The recent removal of the likes’ view in Brazil can be found in the variable spectrum between the good intentions and the commercial interests regarding the well-being and the maintenance of their own public. It is worth to mention that the business model of Facebook – which includes Instagram – works through an advertisement system that depends on the behavior of the platforms’ users.

Even if it is not possible to disassociate the companies’ practices from its economic interests, the removal was considered positive by other stakeholders. Some people considered influencers in Brazil on Instagram – with a lot of followers or engagement, depending on what someone considers influence – opinion in favor of the removal – and even celebrated it. This is mainly because the numbers of likes still are available for the posts’ authors, who are able to show them to their commercial partners if it is the case.

 Likes and digital influence

The arguments bring light to the fact that lifestyles are been sold (literal sense – without value judging here) through the platforms reaching impressive millions of people. At the limit, to show the life, the interior of homes, the details from personal relations and choices is a service offered in a new career that is called “digital influencer”. As in all the other ways someone can take as a profession, this one also has positive possibilities, such as the spread of social action, defense of rights, visibilities to the most diverse cause, but also negative ones, including the promotion of an exposition culture, comparison, and scrutiny of people. Some challenges about digital influence are available at the event we organized here (available just in portuguese).

The likes, however, are not just the only way to measure the digital influence. Commentaries and sharing, public attendance to videos and the profile of the followers – based gender, age, location, interests, etc – that are taken by the platform from the users. It is possible to see the performance of the social platforms’ content does not depend on the result of numbers, but also on what Facebook’s group describes as “engagement”.

The problem of visible likes

There are studies pointing out the negatives studies of the social networks for the user’s health, especially the mental one. This includes not just the profiling on billions of people in behaviorist categories, developed by psychologist techniques to keep people online, but also what has been called “digital addiction” and has big critics, including one of the Facebook’s creator. In a polemic text, Chris Hughes manifested his worries on the increasing investments that companies are doing on the comprehension and alleged manipulation of behaviors to raise the use of their platforms and also on the possibility that people abandon their lifes or other experiences disconnected from the social networks, such as playing with their kids, walking on silence at a park, or cooking with their families. 

The number of likes also would stimulate competition between users and the establishment of an ideal life pattern incompatible with the reality and still could give more reach to disinformation, hate speech and other forms of violence, in such a thing as “herd behavior”. It represents a logic, putting in simple terms, that could help in understanding one of the measure’s reasoning: when a lot of people apparently agree with some content or positions and reflect it on “likes”, this might take other people to agree as well. Another problem is that amount, which might be used to influence behaviors also could not be from natural people, but from “farms of like” or “bots” designed to stimulate engagement. 

The likes end, but the problem does not

The intense competition suggested by bigger or lower numbers of like is also related to the user’s illness. This effect might vary since ambition for determined lifestyle till the self-censorship, the isolation, the disconnection with friends and relatives and, at the limit, to anxiety, depression, and suicide. This coul sound like alarmism, but it is real. The platforms can be cruel mirrors where people see or not their dreams, potentials, and barriers. Unproportional competitions and the reach of speech and violent acts might be also included at the reflection, as well as beautiful patterns that lead to an eating disorder, social exclusion, and diverse discrimination. Once again, this is one of the faces of the coin, which also offers space for diverse speech, care, and emphatic networks development. However, even this kind of healthy influence could bring suffering because of the metrics and results, the pressure for more reactions and the frustration caused by expectations for more results.

The end of the likes is considered a mechanism of well-being promotion, competitiveness reduction, and a step for more healthy reactions inside the platform. It might suggest a reduction in the social mirror created by numbers that limited all the complexity of human life. The big question, however, stays: How to break the mirror and take out the cullets that move us away from ourselves?