Disable or remove likes from a post

Support

AI-generated summary

The discussion revolves around disabling or removing likes from a specific post. FroggyC wants to remove likes from a toxic post that has been intervened on by moderators, without deleting the post. ondrej suggests archiving the entire topic or issuing warnings/suspensions to users who liked the post, as disabling likes for a specific post is not possible.

FroggyC considers splitting the comments into an archived thread to disable likes and asks about removing existing likes via a Rails query. pfaffman suggests hiding likes with CSS, which Lilly expands upon by providing a CSS code snippet to hide likes on archived topics within a specific category.

Alternatively, JammyDodger proposes a more labor-intensive approach by impersonating the problem users and removing likes within a temporarily extended post undo action window.

1

I’m having an issue where users use likes as a low-stakes way to engage with a toxic post, that has been intervened on by moderators. I wouldn’t like to delete the post, because I’d like the discussion to remain organically visible to help other users learn what behavior is not acceptable. But I’d like to remove the likes, and possibly disable the likes entirely on that post.

Is that possible?

2

Hi FroggyC,

I don’t believe that disabling likes for a specific post is possible. I’ve found this data explorer plugin query (provided you have the plugin) Users who like flagged posts. This allows you to see what users are liking flagged posts.

Another suggestion, if you no longer want any replies on the topic to be posted but for it to remain visible would be to archive the entire topic. This however, disable likes on all posts.

Personally, if people kept liking inappropriate posts I’d be looking at the moderator guide and issuing warning or suspensions.

3

Splitting the comments into an archived thread would work for disabling likes.

Now, onto potentially removing the likes, is there maybe some Rails query that I can do, to remove all likes from a post?

P.S. Obviously, I have contacted the users in question and they’ve stopped. I just would like not to let the likes stand as they are.

4

I think hiding them with CSS might be the way. Not sure if you can do it by tag, but you can with category. Maybe it’s possible to hide likes on archived topics.

5

That sounds like a usable idea. I can just shove the topics into a specific category. Thanks.

6

once you move them to a category you can do this in common css, just insert the category slug name in the code.

body.category-YOUR-CATEGORY {
    .widget-button.btn-flat.toggle-like.like.no-text.btn-icon,
    .widget-button.btn-flat.toggle-like.has-like.fade-out.no-text.btn-icon,
    .widget-button.btn-flat.button-count.like-count.highlight-action.regular-likes.btn-text, 
    .widget-button.btn-flat.button-count.like-count.highlight-action.my-likes.btn-icon-text {
    display: none;
    }
}

if it happens to be a subcategory, you will need to use the path parent-category-slug-subcategory-slug.

edit: updated the code because the first i posted would hide flag counts.

7

This is just a theoretical one to float, but could you temporarily jack up post undo action window mins and then impersonate the problem user(s) to remove the Likes (/Reactions)?

I suppose it would depend on how many users had chucked a naughty Like in. It may get a little chore-like if there’s more than a small handful. :slight_smile: