I hope this is a step on the road of phasing out "likes" entirely. I really hate the concept. Even on HN, where it works comparatively well (comment score isn't directly visible, new users can't downvote etc) it bothers me, softly nudging me towards making comments that I know will get easy upvotes or not expressing controversial sentiments. At the end of the day you can't really get around the fact that these systems encourage people to post "popular" content. That helps filter out the true trash, but ultimately leads to monoculture, in my opinion.