Until very recently, likes were displayed on the front page.
See this topic for the discussion as it was being removed:
https://meta.discourse.org/t/does-anyone-actually-like-the-likes-column/18397
You used to be able to show / hide the column with CSS, but that is no longer an option.
@sam and @eviltrout had mentioned some longer term plan to make the topic list columns more configurable in the future.
I’m having trouble finding that post, but it was mentioned here: