Facebook has been busy hiding the number of likes, reactions, and views posts receive.
Facebook started hiding likes in Australia on Friday, September 27th, making the number of opinions, views and likes visible only to a post’s author.
This has also included the number of reactions to ads.
A Facebook spokesperson confirmed the news:
“We are running a limited test where like, reaction and video view counts are made private across Facebook.”
Facebook has added that it would “gather feedback to understand whether this change will improve people’s experiences.”
From September 30th, Facebook said it is still developing the experiment with more people in Australia, but it should be out to the majority of people in the country within the next few days.
In August, Facebook said the Instagram test was meant to “remove the pressure of how many likes a post will receive” on Instagram, and that Facebook was “excited by the early test results.”
In July, Instagram like counts were hidden in seven countries: Australia, Canada, Brazil, New Zealand, Ireland, Italy, and Japan.