It’s a major change in the work of a Social Media channel and I am not sure if Facebook itself won’t proceed in the same way.

A very powerful instrument for the influencers and for the ordinary user, the number of likes and reactions give the satisfaction or the frustration very similar to the real life group behavior. The visualisation of the number of likes and reactions made Social Media to gain success in such measure that it changes the normal behavior of the users in the virtual reality.

I think on the psychological level this is a very good decision, but on the long term can affect negatively the social networks and thus the marketing revenues.

My opinion is this first experiment is paramount for the future face of the social media.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/18/instagram-hides-number-of-likes-from-users-in-australian-trial