App researcher Jane Manchun Wong, who’s popularly known to reverse engineer apps, came across Facebook prototyping the feature on its Android app. Facebook confirmed to TechCrunch that it was indeed carrying out the experiment similar to Instagram.
A few months back, Instagram had announced that it had started testing the removal of the ‘Like’ counter from posts in seven countries including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Ireland, Italy, Japan, and New Zealand. The photo-sharing app explained that it wanted its users to focus on what they share rather than how many likes their posts receive. Earlier, being tested only in Canada, it was rolled out to the other countries. Now, Facebook is expanding this test to its own platform.
The company hasn’t announced which countries will be chosen for the test nor has it confirmed the date when it will be rolled out for testing. Since this isn’t a feature that the company is completely sure about, if it doesn’t work out well, Facebook could roll it back entirely.