Hello @simon and Jeff,
I found the feature (already before, sorry for not making that explicit) in the admin panel to hide the Like functionality for all users. The reason I brought this up is that some users (in the community I am the admin for) feel strongly that the Like functionality “conditions” or biases the discourse towards stuff that “is liked” (rather than what makes for a productive discussion), whereas others feel also strongly that the Like functionality allows them to express and receive nonverbal agreement.
As a compromise, I was thinking it might be relatively easily possible to make this (existing!) setting become a “per-user” one, instead of a system-wide one, such that the CSS (reference) being injected into the page source has a kind of “does-user-want-to-see-likes?” if/then/else logic, by which users can decide which buttons they “hide” (such that additional hiding overrides the visibility from the admin panel, but not the reverse). I.e. users have the option to hide features, but not to make them visible against the admin’s settings…
But I understand that this might be considered too disruptive, plus it wouldn’t be obvious to other users which people in a community see (and can respond to) Likes, etc…