A short history of the like button
The like button was popularised by FriendFeed in 2007 and made universal by Facebook in 2009, after internal debate about calling it Awesome. Designed as a lightweight acknowledgement, it became the engine of modern feeds: the signal [algorithms optimise for](/why-142-has-no-algorithm), and the number that turned sharing into a scoreboard. Several of its creators have since expressed regret.
It is one small button, and it may have reshaped human behaviour more than almost any other piece of interface design in the last twenty years. The like began as a convenience, a way to say “I saw this, I approve” without typing a comment. It ended as the basic currency of the attention economy, the number we chase, the metric the algorithms feed on, and a quiet source of anxiety for hundreds of millions of people.
This is its history: where it came from, what it became, and why some of the people who built it wish they had not. I run a network with no public like counts, so I have a view on the ending. The history comes first.
The origin (2007 to 2009)
The like button as we know it is usually traced to FriendFeed, a social aggregator that introduced a “Like” feature in 2007 as a simple way to react to friends’ posts. It was a small, sensible idea: lower the cost of responding, so people could acknowledge each other without the effort of a comment.
Facebook took notice. Internally, the team spent a surprisingly long time debating the feature, including what to call it; “Awesome” was reportedly a leading candidate before “Like” won. Facebook launched its Like button in February 2009, and later that year acquired FriendFeed outright. The thumbs-up was now attached to the largest social network on earth, and from there it spread to nearly everything.
The intent, by the accounts of those involved, was benign: a frictionless little hit of positivity, a way to spread good feeling cheaply. Some of the engineers credited with it, including Justin Rosenstein and Leah Pearlman, have since spoken about it with notable unease.
What the like became
The like did not stay a simple acknowledgement, because once it existed, it turned out to be measurable, and measurable things become targets.
It became the fuel for the algorithm. A like is a clean, countable signal of engagement, exactly what an attention-optimising feed needs to decide what to show next. The more a post is liked, the more it is shown; the more it is shown, the more it shapes what everyone posts next. The like quietly became the steering wheel of the feed.
It became a public score. Visible like counts turned every post into a performance with a number attached, and turned users into people watching their own metrics. A post that did not get many likes started to feel like a small public failure. Sharing, which had been about communication, became partly about scoring.
And it became a source of anxiety, particularly for younger and heavier users, for whom the count attached to a photo of themselves could feel like a measure of worth. This is the part the creators tend to regret: not the button, but what the number did to people.
The reckoning (2019 onward)
By the late 2010s, the costs were visible enough that the platforms responded. Around 2019, Instagram began trialling the hiding of like counts, eventually rolling it out as an option: you could still like, but the public number could be hidden. Other platforms made similar moves.
The logic of this is worth sitting with. Hiding the like count is an admission, by the platforms themselves, that the visible number was changing behaviour for the worse, encouraging comparison, performance and anxiety, and that removing it might make people feel better. It is the industry quietly conceding that one of its most basic features had a cost it had not priced in. We have written about what the research found when the numbers come off, in what happens when you remove the numbers.
Why the like persists anyway
If the like has these costs, why is it still everywhere? Because for an ad-funded platform, the like is too useful to give up. It is the cleanest engagement signal available, the thing that powers the ranking that drives the time-on-app that sells the advertising. Hiding the count is a concession the platforms can afford; removing the button is not, because the button feeds the machine. So the like endures, lightly reformed, because the business depends on it even where the wellbeing case against it is clear.
Where 142 fits
142 has no public like counts, and the reason is structural rather than moralistic. Because 142 is funded by subscription rather than advertising, it does not need an engagement signal to feed a ranking algorithm, because there is no ranking algorithm; the feed is simply chronological. With no need to measure engagement, there is no need for a public score, so the anxiety the count produces simply has no home. You can respond to your friends, but nobody is keeping a tally, because nobody, including us, has any reason to. The broader argument is in why 142 has no algorithm.
Summary
The like button began in 2007 as a small kindness, a frictionless way to acknowledge a post, and was made universal by Facebook in 2009. It became something far larger: the engine of engagement-driven feeds, a public scoreboard attached to every post, and a quiet source of anxiety for millions, to the point that several of its creators came to regret it and platforms began hiding the count. It persists because an ad-funded feed cannot function without it. A network funded differently has no need for it at all, which is why some, including 142, simply do not keep the score.
frequently asked questions
Who invented the like button?
The like was popularised by FriendFeed in 2007 and made universal by Facebook, which launched its version in 2009. Several Facebook engineers, including Justin Rosenstein and Leah Pearlman, are credited with developing it, and some have since spoken about it with regret. The exact authorship is shared and debated.
Why did Facebook create the like button?
The stated intent was to lower the cost of responding to posts: a quick, frictionless way to spread positivity without writing a comment. The team reportedly debated calling it "Awesome" before settling on "Like". Its later role as the engine of engagement-driven feeds was not the original design goal.
Why do some apps hide like counts now?
Because visible like counts were found to encourage comparison, performance and anxiety, particularly among younger users. Hiding the number, which Instagram began trialling around 2019, is an admission by the platforms that the metric had real psychological costs. The button stays because it still feeds the algorithm; the public count became optional.
Do likes affect what I see in my feed?
On algorithmic platforms, yes, significantly. Likes are a key engagement signal that ranking systems use to decide what to show you and how widely to distribute each post. This is why the like is so central to ad-funded social media: it steers the feed. Chronological, non-algorithmic feeds, like 142's, do not use it this way.
Are likes bad for mental health?
The research is nuanced, but visible like counts are associated with social comparison and, for some users, anxiety and lowered mood, which is why platforms experimented with hiding them. The button itself is fairly harmless; the public *number* attached to it is where most of the documented harm sits.
Does 142 have likes?
142 has no public like counts. Because it is funded by subscription and has no ranking algorithm, it has no need for an engagement metric, so there is no public score to chase or be measured against. You can respond to friends, but nobody is keeping a tally. The reasoning is in [why 142](/why-142).