The world of social media is constantly expanding, and with people dedicating themselves to it professionally, the number of likes is growing ever larger. But of course, the problem arises when we stop realizing that behind each "thumbs up" is a person, and the numbers end up becoming somewhat distorted. If you're one of those who prefers to hide this number of interactions, today we want to explain how you can disable likes on your Facebook account —both your own and those of others.
Should social networks be controlled?
Before explaining the process you need to follow to stop seeing these interactions on your Facebook account, we'd like to discuss something with you. It's a hot topic in social media right now: should social networks be regulated?
The truth is, things seem to have spiraled out of control on social media. Many people are trying to make a living from it and need those numbers to do so. Others, however, simply compete to see who gets the most likes on their latest post. This kind of behavior ends up affecting many users who spend time on social media psychologically, leading to depression, anxiety, and many other problems.
And the worst part is when this directly affects the youngest members of the population . Teenagers who want to be like their favorite influencer, without stopping to look, analyze, and understand everything that lies behind that facade.
For this reason, we and many other users believe that some control should exist and be established through social media . What's the starting point? Well, it seems that a good starting point is this initiative that Mark Zuckerberg's company began a couple of years ago. This move consists of allowing us to manually (for now) stop seeing and displaying the number of interactions our posts receive. Initially, they did this through Instagram with a small, select group of users to, as they always do, observe their behavior.
It seems that these tests came to fruition because, today, we already have this option available to all of us who are Instagram and Facebook users. So, next, we want to show you how you can do it on your Facebook profile.
How to turn off Facebook likes
Now we come to the most important part of this article, and you should know something rather curious. For reasons we don't fully understand, it seems this social network doesn't want to make it entirely easy for us to hide this data, or at least not on all devices.
Why do we say this? Well, because, to do it from our computer using the browser, the place where the option is located is not intuitive at all. What's more, we ourselves have taken a long time to locate the menu.
Disable likes on Facebook from mobile
What is certain is that, from the application itself for our mobile phone (either with an Android or with an iPhone), the process is not complex at all:
- Enter the Facebook app to your account.
- Here click on the menu of the three lines in the lower right corner.
- Once in this section, click on “Settings and privacy”, and then click on “Settings” again.
- In this new screen you will have to reach the "Preferences" section and, in it, click on "Reaction Preferences".
- Arrived at this new screen we will see it quite clearly. Have two options to hide the number of reactions in our posts: one for the content of other people and another for our own.
Now it depends on what you want to do or rather see while browsing through Facebook. But the truth is that, if you "silence" the two options, we can assure you that you will feel greater peace by not seeing any data that could lead to comparison with the rest.
Hide likes on Facebook from your computer
As we told you, in the case of accessing Facebook through the browser, the process is not so intuitive, although it is not complicated by any means. Just follow this route:
- Log in to your Facebook account.
- Click on the arrow icon that you will have in the upper right corner.
- In the new dropdown, click on “Settings and privacy”.
- Now, instead of entering the settings as we did from the phone, you have to access the menu with the name "News Feed Preferences".
- A new window will automatically be displayed where we can see, among many other options, that of "Reaction Preferences". Access it.
- Again, as we saw in the previous section, we have two options to choose from that will directly affect the display of likes in our account: one for other people's posts and one for our posts.
Limit what kind of likes you share
Another interesting aspect of this type of information that we share, and that not too many people know about, is that we can limit certain types of "likes" that we share through Facebook.
Imagine that you have a professional profile that is dedicated to spreading the word about video games and that, obviously, you are not interested in letting everyone who follows you know that you have liked a post from your favorite restaurant. Well, this is an aspect that you will be able to control from your account and, like other things, getting to it is not entirely intuitive. Follow the steps below:
- Access your Facebook account from the browser.
- Click on the icon of your photograph to reach the wall.
- Here you have to click, just below your photo, on the “See more” option.
- In this dropdown select "like".
- Now, just below, all the pages, movies and different elements that you have given a like with your account will appear. At the beginning of this category (just above) you will see the name "I like" and just in the opposite corner you will see the typical menu of the three points. Press it and select "Edit the privacy of your likes".
- A new drop-down will appear showing the different categories of likes that can be registered. If you don't want your likes related to movie posts to be seen, for example, tap on the globe icon to the right of it and adjust the privacy of who will be able to see them.
Here you will be able to choose that only certain types of likes your friends see, only you see them or even customize it so that certain people do not see these likes. A very curious function and surely it will be useful to many people.