No likes

gluon

In the spirit of recent movements, which have seen communities moving away from social networks back to classic web forums, I believe disabling the like button can be beneficial.

For one, it encourages people to actually say some words when they really like something. You know, like we used to do before the like buttons. In addition to that it also avoids social scoring of posts.

On the other hand, sometimes we actually agree or like something but don't necessarily have anything to add. So maybe the best of both worlds is to add something to the conversation when we really really like a publication and avoid commenting otherwise.

CosmicEquilibrium

If someone makes a positive comment means that the person like it, if someone makes a negative comment means that the person don't like it, it's easy.

kon

CosmicEquilibrium Sounds reasonable! Also it is okay to not react at all even if affected by it 🙂

kon

I agree with gluon's sentiment. If something resonates, reacting with words is far superior to reacting with a binary signal that increases or decreases some counter.

Let me get deeply philosophical for a moment, even though you never asked me to 😛

There is a quiet irony in how we treat numbers, isn't there? They began as representations of certain kinds of value, mostly the quantitative kind, yet we increasingly let them stand in for value itself, the qualitative kind. Once a metric becomes the default way we judge success, it stops being neutral and starts acting like a value system. It feels objective and comparable, which makes it persuasive even when it is blunt. Large systems, including "democracy" and "capitalism" as we have them today, are especially prone to this because they need legible signals to steer behavior at scale.

This drift mirrors how likes and votes enable groupthink, where the crowd's aggregated popularity scores becomes a shortcut for judgment. Just as in representative government (an oxymoron, by the way), we defer to "masters" (elected officials, experts, or algorithms) to interpret the collective will and solve our problems, rather than grappling with issues ourselves. It discourages deep, independent thinking: why wrestle with nuance when you can glance at the score and move on? Why take responsibility for your own views when the majority's tally feels like validation or condemnation? This isn't conducive to real progress. It fosters passivity, where we outsource our agency to the system instead of owning our contributions.

And just because both arithmetic and ethics use the word "value" does not mean they point to the same thing, even if we often behave as though they do. Balance sheets and growth curves are useful tools, but tools are not ends. When what is measurable becomes the dominant language of decision making, what is harder to measure can be treated as optional. Not because ethics matters less, but because it is harder to quantify, harder to argue for cleanly, and slower to show up in reports.

I shall not confuse an instrument with the good. Numbers can describe outcomes, but they cannot by themselves tell us what is worth choosing. Rules and laws are similar in that sense. We are told they are here to coordinate behavior, but they cannot substitute for judgment or virtue in the people applying them, therefore having non-natural laws is unethical. I am ready to defend and prove this stance against all the standard "statist" arguments.

The like button is a small, everyday version of the same drift. A numerical proxy becomes an arbiter of worth and quietly shapes what people post and how they respond. The problem is not numbers. The problem is what gets crowded out when some arbitrary benchmark takes center stage. Meaning, intention, dignity, harm, fairness, and context do not compress well in any context like that.

So disabling likes can be a small way of refusing that drift and keeping the conversation grounded in what actually carries nuance, which is language as you correctly pointed out. It also shifts attention back to what is in our control. Not the score, not the crowd's reaction, but the quality of our contribution and the care with which we respond.

gluon

kon Very good point. I had already made some parallels with social behaviour myself, especially group thinking. Not as deeply as you've exposed here, but now that I read your words, it just resonates. It's scary how we as a society are controlled by numbers. Think about elections too, at the end of the day, the winner just had more likes. Does that mean it was the best "post"? Where are the nuances? Do even those who cast their votes on the winner fully agree with their proposals?

No. Yet we can't all agree on a better system which isn't as simplistic as the rule of majority. This leads me to entertain the idea that perhaps the only way to fully get rid of these quantity as quality metrics is to live in small communities and/or decrease the power of those in charge. We are inherently different and have different values, at most we can fully agree with a small bunch of people, not a country.

Now back to the online community topic, this is also why I love small forums. We can much more easily discuss stuff without a bunch of group thinkers downvoting our voice to oblivion. Obviously we will still disagree but our different opinions will remain relevant and easily readable by the other members, which is more important than winning the social scoring game. 🙂

kon

gluon You hit the nail on the head with "decrease the power of those in charge". To me, small communities are less the secret ingredient and more what naturally emerges when people are free to associate, exit, and reorganize without a centralized authority overriding them. The secret ingredient is not giving anyone special rights like we do with government, so nobody can hide behind institutions and everyone has skin in the game.

When I say "no one in charge", I mean no ruler with a special legal privilege to initiate force. Not "no rules" or "no coordination", but no class of people exempt from the constraints everyone else lives under. That is basically the literal meaning of anarchy, absence of rulers. It is also the moral hinge for me, because once you remove the permission structure for coercion, cooperation has to become voluntary and accountable.

We are very far from that today, and part of what keeps it stable is exactly what you described. We compress legitimacy into a number and call it consent, then treat the result as if it settled the nuance. It rarely does.

And I fully agree with your last paragraph. Small forums work because they restore context. Additionally when you have an ongoing relationship with the people you disagree with, the incentives change. You cannot just farm points and disappear, and empathy becomes the default because you will meet again. The same is true in politics. Even when someone is difficult, it is still better when they are a peer rather than someone with institutional power over everyone else.
So disabling likes is a way of reducing that shortcut pressure and keeping judgment inside the conversation rather than above it, which is something I fully support.