The Facebook Experience Without a Like Button
Mat Honan at Wired spent 48 hours Liking everything he saw. Elan Morgan did the opposite, going two weeks without Liking a single thing. They came to different conclusions—Morgan reported that her feed improved and her desire to interact with people in real life increased, while Honan found himself inundated with click bait and political sludge.
.. The Like button isn’t just about you being able to shout “I like this” into the Facebook void. It’s also about your posts getting Liked, and the external validation that comes from the little red numbers that pool in your toolbar. Without either of those, Powers says, we’ll all have to find more intimate ways to tell each other what we like about them. Which might be a good thing for everybody.