The test will be limited to people in Australia for now.
As rumors suggested, Facebook is getting ready to start hiding “Likes” on its own site. The company has now officially started a test that will remove public visibility of Like, reaction and video view counts from people’s posts and ads across Facebook. This is going to be happening only in Australia, though, and Facebook told Engadget it has not decided whether the test will expand to other places in the future. Facebook said it wants to get some initial results from Australia, before eventually deciding which steps to take next.
If you’re a Facebook user in Australia, this means that while your friends and family will still be able to like and add emoji reactions to your posts, they won’t be able to see how many others interacted with it. The same goes if you want to see how many people liked a post from someone you know; that information on counts will now only be visible to the author of a post, who can still see the number of Likes or reactions their posts are getting, it just won’t be public. “We will gather feedback to understand whether this change will improve people’s experiences,” a Facebook spokesperson said.
www.engadget.com/2019/09/26/facebook-hides-like-counts-test-australia/