As a dev that's worked in the marketing sector for 20+ years, I know that for every one person that replies there are 50+ people that liked what you had to say but didn't reply. The Like concept makes it easy to know if your audience is vibing with what you have to say (or not), esp for smaller creators. I'm not talking about algos or curation, but for the benefit of the content creators to know what their audience is looking for. Market forces. Supply and demand.
Discussion
Yeah I get that. But personally I would replace a like count, with a button that auto tipped 1 sat or some other vanishingly inconsequential amount.
Easy for the client to resolve the receipts and give the author a like count if they want one for dopamine etc, but not really visible for others to see how many tips a note received.
I think this is a better way of doing it. Doesn’t mean anyone will implement that though.
but is something that you 'like' but don't have anything to say in response really promoting dialog and conversation? perhaps not having a like button will encourage previous lurkers to join the convo. I say this as someone who is mostly a lurker.