likes

From IndieWeb

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likes are sometimes part of the information about a post displayed on the post itself, often in a post footer, like a total number like responses, icons of recent likers, or even a datetime ordered list of likes.

Why

By displaying a summary of likes of your post, you show that there are (and can be more) some light interaction with your post. It also shows immediate feedback to those that have responded to your posts with their own indie like responses.

Why not to show counts

Why to NOT show likes (etc.) counts and what to show instead:

  • 2021-05-26 BBC: Instagram lets users hide likes to reduce social media pressure

    Instagram is offering its users the option to hide the number of likes they receive on posts on the app.

    The aim is to “depressurize people’s experience” on the platform, the social media giant said.

    Users with the feature enabled will now see the username of a follower who has liked the post, “and others”, instead of a number.

  • 2019-05-01 Washington Post: Here’s why Instagram is going to hide your ‘likes’

    Instagram will test hiding the number of likes and views that photos and videos receive — a central aspect of its platform — to rein in competitive tendencies and make the experience a little “less pressurized.”

  • UI consideration/brainstorm: limit to showing or prefer showing/counting likes from your own network of followings/followees or maybe 2nd degree instead of global: https://twitter.com/aaronpk/status/1154467238772002817
    • "What I'm saying is I actually don't think a global number of likes on a post is even a good idea. What's more interesting is how many ppl within my own network have liked a post.

      Otherwise we're just mirroring Twitter along with all the negative behaviors that come with it." @aaronpk July 25, 2019

How to

How to display

There are many methods for displaying the likes under a post, including:

  • facepile
  • chronologically inline with all the other responses (Tumblr style)
  • chronologically listed within a group of just likes, which may come before/after chronological response-type-specific clustering such as comments, reposts. (Known / Ben Werdmüller does this on werd.io)

In all such methods, consider linking from the specific face or chronological response item to the permalink of the respective indie like of your post.

If you are showing silo likes of POSSE copies of your posts, from silos that lack permalinks for such like posts / responses, then you may link them to the user liking your post as a fallback.

How to de-duplicate

If you POSSE a post to a silo, then it is possible that someone posting an indie like of your post will also POSSE their like to that silo, thus resulting your post seemingly seeing two likes from the same one like from that person. Examples:

Since those likes represent only a single actual liking action (the liking of the POSSE copy is just a mirroring of that action to a silo for silo-only readers to see), your post should de-duplicate any such likes of POSSE copies of your posts, and show only a single like, no matter what your display design is for likes.

Duplicate likes can also happen if you POSSE to more than one silo and one person likes your post in more than one silo. In that case, consider preserving all of them, and maybe cluster them, but don't de-dupe. There's no consensus yet though. Up to you!

You can de-duplicate likes by looking for the indie like of your post to explicitly have a like-of link to the POSSE copy of your post, and if such, you know you can count that like of the POSSE copy as a duplicate (and do not need to display it).

Alternatively, you can fetch the user's h-card on their site, look for rel-me links, and use those to de-dupe based on the h-card in the backfed silo like (aka POSSE copy).

When you detect such duplicate likes on silo copies of your posts, you should prefer and show only the indie like on your likes display on your post.

Related:

IndieWeb Examples

There are a few IndieWeb sites which receive and handle webmentions for like posts and display them in various ways (as a facepile, as a list, mixed in with other interactions like reposts and comments).

Ben Werdmuller

Ben Werdmüller uses Known to display a chronological list of likes of a post, between similar chronological lists of comments and reshares, since 20??-??-??. Examples:

Kyle Mahan

Kyle Mahan uses Redwind to display a facepile of likes under each post since 20??-??-??. Example:

Aaron Parecki

Aaron Parecki uses p3k to display a facepile of likes under each post since 20??-??-??. Example:

Marty McGuire

Marty McGuire uses webmention.io to display a facepile of likes under each post on his site at martymcgui.re since 2017-03-17. Example:

Marty McGuire uses webmention.io to display a facepile of likes under each post on his podcast at wehavetoask.com since 2016-09-01. Example:

Pelle Wessman

Pelle Wessman uses webmention.herokuapp.com to display a realtime facepile of likes under each post on his blog since 2014-12-30. webmention.herokuapp.com can also show likes mixed with the rest of the responses when facepiles has been opted out of. Examples:

Sebastiaan Andeweg

Sebastiaan Andeweg uses Kirby with his own take on the webmentions plugin to display likes and other interactions under his posts. Displays as a facepile with a heart-icon. Example:

David Shanske

David Shanske uses WordPress and the Semantic Linkbacks plugin to display likes and other interactions under his posts. In the past, he did have a Facepile. But currently, likes are displayed in comment form until further notice.

gRegor Morrill

gRegor Morrill uses ProcessWire on gregorlove.com to display likes and other interactions since ????-??-??.

Hidde

Hidde shows likes on his posts at https://hidde.blog/ since at least 2021-11-12 as a prose list of names:

... add more here!

  • ...

Most Likes

The most liked things on various sites, including indieweb sites

  • IndieWeb: On 2019-01-11 Aaron Parecki posted a screenshot of attempting to read a Medium article on his iPhone but getting obscured by pop-ups: https://aaronparecki.com/2019/01/11/28/

    How did we let the Web get to this point. All I wanted to do was read this blog post.
    Screenshot of Medium.com article with pop-ups prompting for native app use and Google login obscuring the article

    • 303 likes as of 2019-030 per the facepile on the post
  • Instagram: On 2019-01-04, the "Egg Gang" posted a photo of a single egg on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/BsOGulcndj-/

    Photograph of a brown egg on a white background
    Let’s set a world record together and get the most liked post on Instagram. Beating the current world record held by Kylie Jenner (18 million)! We got this 🙌

    #LikeTheEgg #EggSoldiers #EggGang

    which quickly amassed over 50 million likes, becoming the latest most liked thing. Sources: 2019-01-14 The Verge,
  • Twitter: On 2017-08-12, Barack Obama posted a photo with a caption quoting Mandela to Twitter: https://twitter.com/BarackObama/status/896523232098078720

    "No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion..."
    Obama looking up at an open window with babies of various ethnic backgrounds looking out

    That tweet appears to be the most measurably liked tweet (and was the most liked thing at the time) with over 3.5 million likes as of 2017-08-16 (four days!). [1] [2]

See also:

Silo Examples

Silos such as Facebook and Instagram show the number of likes on posts in various ways:

Facebook

"👍 so-and-so and nn others liked this"

  • inline space/comma separated list of linked usernames/fullnames for some number of likes below a threshold number.
  • inline comma separated list of linked fullnames followed by "and 84 others like this" text, where "84" is the remaining number of likes and is linked to a modal popup that displays a list. - Facebook

Instagram

"17 likes" - for 11(?) or more likes.

  • inline space/comma separated list of linked usernames/fullnames for some number of likes below a threshold number.

Similar

Similar verbs/info/post-types:

  • favorites (e.g. on Twitter)
  • heart (sometimes just a heart symbol)
  • bookmarks (delicious used to have a view of who had bookmarked a URL)

See Also

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