New Delhi: In May this year, Facebook rolled out a new feature that would allow its users to hide their public like counts. In a nutshell, this meant that if a person so chooses, others cannot see how many ‘likes’ or reactions their posts have received. In a blog post explaining the decision, the company said that the decision was taken after testing to see if hiding these counters would ‘depressurise’ people’s experience on Instagram.“What we heard from people and experts was that not seeing like counts was beneficial for some and annoying to others,” it said. Therefore, users were given the choice to decide whether they want to hide their public like counts or keep them.Internal documents accessed by The Wire, which were submitted to the US Congress by whistleblower Frances Haugen, show that this move may well have been the result of research that Facebook conducted on ‘social comparison’ – a theory which suggests that people evaluate their own abilities (or popularity, in the case of social media) by comparing themselves to others.The research document, titled ‘Country Differences in Social Comparison’ and dated June 18, 2019, was intended to explain global differences in social comparison so that Facebook’s product development can be guided “to reduce harmful outcomes”.It has many interesting findings that were drawn from on-platform surveys of 18 countries, respondents’ log data and 46 interviews in three countries – India, Mexico and the US.One intervention that the document suggests is to provide users with the option to hide like counts on other peoples’ posts – something that Facebook tested in 2019 and finally rolled out earlier this year.That Facebook took action based on internal research in this case only highlights whistleblower Haugen’s claim that conflict of interest prevented the company from taking decisions that were ‘good for the public’ when they might be detrimental to it. Haugen elaborated this claim by saying that “political sensitivities” did not allow Facebook to assign greater monitoring to RSS-connected posts that had ‘fear mongering’ and ‘anti-Muslim’ content, as The Wire has reported.Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen in Berlin, Germany, November 3, 2021. Photo: Reuters/Michele TantussiReactions to ‘likes’ on friends’ postsThe document says that in India and the US, seeing more likes on friends’ posts is associated with increased social comparison. “We expect that tests that remove likes will be most successful at reducing social comparison in the US and India,” the researchers wrote.Multiple participants in India and the US felt that seeing friends receive more ‘likes’ gave rise to unpleasant sensations.“[Likes are] like salt. People [also] comment ‘nice picture’, ‘looking good’, ‘having fun’. That makes me more jealous,” a 19-year-old male interviewed in Delhi said.Another woman who was interviewed in Los Angeles, US, compared people who like or comment on others’ posts to “an army of supporters against me”.One recommendation made by the researchers is that since social comparison is higher in South Asia and South-East Asia, it might be more valuable to design interventions in those regions.While hiding ‘likes’ may reduce social comparison, the researchers note that in India, most interview participants were “firmly against the idea of removing like counts, despite the low relationship between seeing likes and social comparison”.This perhaps explains why Facebook decided to give users control over their like counters, rather than hiding them by default.Another recommendation the document makes is to cap reaction counts on others’ posts in a user’s feed, saying this may be preferable if “the perceived value of feedback counts exceeds their negative impact”.Also Read: 2019 Lok Sabha Election: Towards End of Polls, Facebook Deployed Emergency Measures to Curb MisinfoSocial comparison and IndiaThe researchers found that the user’s country is almost twice as important as age or gender to understand social comparison. This, however, does not mean that teenagers or women did not experience more social comparison – in most countries, Facebook’s research showed that was indeed the case. It just means that country was a more important predictor of social comparison than demographic variables.The document says that though social comparison on Facebook varies by country, it is generally at least as prevalent as in everyday life. While India figured at the top end of users experiencing social comparison on Facebook, it was still lower than what they experienced in everyday life.Curiously, India was an outlier in some parameters. While users in most countries said that social comparison decreased with age, the opposite was true in India. People who were interviewed by the researchers said that as adults, “the sheer volume of opportunities and freedom exhibited by others increased their feelings of comparison”. This was especially true among women from conservative families, who compared themselves with women who were “allowed” by their families to post photos on Facebook.Taking from these observations, the researchers recommended that while prior research has suggested that teens and younger adults tend to be more susceptible to social comparison, interventions that target older adults may also be useful in countries like India.Also Read: Facebook Saw Spikes in Hate Speech in India After CAA Protests and During First Covid LockdownIn India, the research also found that men experienced more social comparison than women – bucking the trend observed in other countries. This is perhaps because men feel more pressure to provide for their families, the researchers say, citing the example of a 38-year-old man who was interviewed in Delhi. This participant said that if his wife sees a post on Facebook that elicits comparison, “there is a tense atmosphere… I feel I am not able to fulfil her needs”.The researchers also hypothesise that the percentage of women in the labour force is directly proportional to their feelings of social comparison. They give the example of India, where the participation of women in the labour force is the lowest among the 18 countries surveyed and men experienced social comparison more than their counterparts in other countries.This may be a flawed conclusion. Participation of women in the formal labour force in India is indeed low, but if their participation in the informal market – for which data is not readily available – is factored in, the assumption might change.A 3D printed Facebook’s new rebrand logo Meta and Facebook logo are seen in this illustration. Photo: Reuters/Dado Ruvic‘Jealousy’ a consistent themeInterview participants in India told Facebook’s researchers that when they saw friends get more likes, they felt jealous. Those interviewed also believed that other people posted photos or statuses with the intention of ‘eliciting jealousy’.“They don’t post with the purpose of sharing their enjoyment with others. They do it with the intention of hurting others,” said a 37-year-old female who was interviewed in Delhi about her perception of other peoples’ posts.Conversely, some participants also admitted that if others felt worse by comparison to a post they had made, they would ‘feel happy’.In countries where social comparison was ‘rare’, like Mexico, participants said that they wanted others to be happy, even if it meant they might feel worse by comparison.
