FACEBOOK WILL LET USERS ELIMINATE `LIKE' COUNT IN TEST

Facebook Inc. plans to experiment with allowing more users to block “like” counts on their own posts or content from others, expanding an effort to gauge whether the feature intensified peer pressure particularly among young people. The social network has been testing hiding likes on its photo-sharing app Instagram in several countries, including Canada. Now, the company said Wednesday it will expand that experiment on Instagram in the coming weeks and explore implementing a similar opt-out test on Facebook's main site. Facebook said it began the experiment to better understand whether eliminating like counts would reduce the pressure of posting to Instagram. “Some still wanted to see like counts so they could track what's popular,” Facebook said in a statement.