"Like" it or not: How do Users Understand the Relationship between

The "like" button on many social media platforms allows individuals to express endorsement of content. However, sites with a "liking" feature, such as Facebook, also permit users to edit or change the content of the original post after it has been published and "liked" by other users. This can be problematic if a transparent edit history is not (easily) available. In this paper, we report an online survey that assessed how individuals interpret what has changed in such a case. We tested four interface designs to see whether making the evolution of "likes" and edited comments more explicit improved users' understanding of what had happened. We found, that in contrast to what is displayed in current interface implementations, alternate interface designs make clearer how "likes" are associated with posts that changed over time. These have the potential to help users understand what has been changed in the post more easily.