by For many years, Facebook’s ‘thumbs up’ icon adorned the sign that welcomed visitors to the company’s California headquarters.
It was, of course, an image of the Like button, launched in 2009. It was eventually replaced by the blue pretzel Meta logo at Mark Zuckerberg’s headquarters in 2021. By then, however, it was already clear that the fist is ubiquitous , already blue-cuffed to one of the most significant pieces of computer code ever released, shifting the goalposts in the way the world consumes information, markets and communicates.
Today, 20 years after Facebook’s launch on 4 February 2004, there are many Likes every day, including everything from personal photos to news pieces to viral posts (especially viral posts).
The Like – and its ability to turn media into a popularity contest – has driven most of the social media giants that have subsequently launched, as well as helping to drive entire segments of the economy, such as influencer marketing. But he was also at the center of rows over privacy and blamed, in part, the rise of highly polarized and distorted content online, ‘fake news’ and filter bubbles.
On his anniversary, Yahoo News looks at the Like that Zuckerberg took.
Why ‘Like’ almost didn’t happen
Facebook was not the first site to use a button that enabled users to indicate approval. The social news site Digg, for example, had a way of doing ‘Digg’ or ‘Bury’ news stories, but Facebook’s Like made these obsolete due to its flexibility and scale – you might like everything from a friend’s photo to a local business.
At Facebook, the iconic button almost made it into the real world, with the company’s workers of the opinion that it was a ‘cursed project’ because of Mark Zuckerberg’s refusal.
Writing on the question-and-answer site Quora, Facebook engineer Andrew ‘Boz’ Bosworth described one meeting in 2007 where Zuckerberg rejected the feature. He wrote: “Ready to launch and everything seems to be fixed but surprisingly the final review with Zuck does not go well. Concerns about whether the interaction is public or private, cannibalizing from the share aspect. “
Bosworth also recalled how the project, originally codenamed ‘Props’, discussed using a plus sign or stars, before settling on the thumb in 2007 after it was finally given internal approval.
The button was originally called the Awesome button and was tested in people’s NewsFeed, initially with a system of positive and negative feedback.
Before it was accepted, the team had to prove that the number of comments was not reduced by using the Like button, which was very popular on Facebook at the time. In tests, the team discovered that they actually had a Like button increases opinions.
In a blog post announcing the launch, Facebook said: “We’ve introduced an easy way to tell friends you like what they’re sharing on Facebook with one easy click. Anywhere you can comment on your friends’ content , you will also have the option to click ‘Like’ to tell your friends exactly: ‘I like this.'”
How Like changed the world
The Like button quickly grew to become central to Facebook, dictating (among other things) what stories a visitor would see on the News Feed.
As Facebook said: “When you like something, this tells us to show you other content we think you’ll also want to see.”
That ‘Like’ helped usher in a massive change in the media landscape, with posters encouraged to follow Likes (other, more complex ‘reactions’ such as the sad face and love button were added many years later).
The more a post was liked, the more other people would see it, so users and media outlets quickly learned to change their output to get more and more of them.
Ezra Callahan, one of the first dozen or so employees at Facebook, told Fast Company that some at the company were concerned that the Like button was too easy, and that it would “end thoughtful engagement, because people were lazy and that they would take the lazy way out”.
Facebook is 20 years old – read more
But the momentum was unstoppable. Likes drove a new news feed ranking algorithm; helped drive advertising; and allowed Facebook to collect data on user habits. All subsequent rivals, from Twitter to TikTok, have since relied on Likes or a similar mechanism to drive the algorithm that feeds people’s content.
And it’s unlikely to change too much in the near future with three of the most popular sites used by young people to consume content – Instagram, TikTok and YouTube – partly driven by technologies like Facebook’s ‘Like’ button .
The dark side of Likes
Facebook’s Like button has led to an information economy where users become addicted to refreshing their screens – in the same way that gambling becomes addictive in slot machines.
The ‘Like’ button informs what users see on screen, and also rewards them for posting content that resonates with others.
Professor Daniel Kruger from the University of Michigan suggested that apps like Facebook aim to be ‘as addictive as possible’ and to affect the same brain regions as cocaine – and this contributes to one of the main reasons why Facebook is so embedded in our lives to explain: we can’t put it down.
Behavioral psychologist Nir Eyal, author of Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products told the Guardian in 2018 that such products are designed to be addictive.
Eyal said: “It starts with a trigger, an action, a reward and then an investment and it is through continuous cycles, through these hooks, that habits are formed. We see them in all kinds of products, certainly in social media and gaming. This is a big part of how habits are changed.”
“The products are built to be attractive and what is attractive to some people is addictive to others, obviously.”
There is also growing concern about Facebook (and social media in general) and its impact on mental health. An analysis of early Facebook users (when it was limited to US universities) found a 7% increase in severe depression and a 20% increase in anxiety disorder.
A 2018 study by University of Queensland researchers found that taking a short five-day break from the Zuckerberg app reduced levels of the stress hormone cortisol.
However, after five days, most of the 138 volunteers reported a decrease in feelings of well-being – and they were looking forward to getting back on Facebook.
The influence of the Like button is also linked to significant political moments.
Facebook algorithms were used to influence general elections in the Philippines in 2015, the UK’s Brexit vote and the US Presidential election in 2016.
In 2014, employees of Cambridge Analytica obtained the private data of tens of millions of Facebook users to build voter profiles. The data of 87 million users was collected by a seemingly innocent app, and used to target political ads.
Facebook ‘Likes’ were crucial in this regard, allowing political groups to build complex psychological profiles for targeted advertising. Just a few ‘likes’ were enough to create profiles that would reveal a person’s sex, who they would vote for, and predict their vulnerability to substance abuse.
What does the future hold?
Social media expert Elisah van Allen, Head of Social Media at specialist communications agency 33Seconds, says the Like button has created entire economies such as the rise of social media influencers – but it also has a dark side when it comes to affecting people’s mental health.
Van Allen tells Yahoo News UK: “The FB ‘Like’ button has changed the way we connect with individuals, brands and businesses. It allows people to share ideas, achievements, moments etc. quickly and easily validated, creating positive reinforcement and encouraging more meaningful interactions online.
The ‘Like’ button has also shaped online algorithms, affecting the content we see and the links we make. Its impact on user engagement and content visibility has paved the way for influencers, content creators and brands to succeed online, leveraging it as a recognized metric of popularity and relevance.
But the negative side is also very visible in today’s world, says Van Allen – in everything from the pressure to get approval online, to low-grade content produced to garner reactions.
Recommended reading
The changing media landscape created by the Like button has been blamed on everything from the rapid spread of fake news, which goes viral when users like and share anything that agrees with their worldview, to ‘filter bubbles’, where user ‘learning’ algorithms. choices and feed a distorted media landscape with only one side of the argument.
Van Allen says: “On the media and publishing side of things, the ‘Like’ button has arguably had an impact over time on the type of news content we consume and the way we respond to it – for example , influencing certain publications to produce specifically polarizing content, to elicit an immediate emotional response from readers.”
“Things like bullying can be damaging to our mental health and potentially validating behaviour. It’s a challenge to strike the right balance between fostering a positive online environment and addressing the dangers that there could be social validation and we can’t ignore it and we should continue to discuss it; especially for the younger generations who are now growing up with social media in their lives.”
