Should we dislike the like button?

Like many people, comic artist Leah Pearlman uses Facebook to promote and share her work
Leah Pearlman draws comics about ideas like "emotional literacy" and "self-love". When she began posting them on Facebook, her friends responded warmly.
But then Facebook changed its algorithm - how it decides what to put in front of us. When social media is a big part of your life, an algorithm change can come as a shock.
Leah's content was being shown to fewer people, and her comics started to get fewer likes.
"It felt like I wasn't getting enough oxygen," she told Vice.com. "It was like, 'Wait a minute, I poured my heart and soul into this drawing, but it's only had 20 likes.'"
It's easy to empathise. Social approval can be addictive, and what's a Facebook "like" if not social approval distilled into its purest form?
Researchers liken our smartphones to slot machines, triggering the same reward pathways in our brain.
Prof Natasha Dow Schull argues that slot machines are addictive "by design", and that casinos aim to maximise "time on device". They want to keep people in front of their screens, admiring the pretty lights and receiving those dopamine hits.
Social media firms have taken note. More likes, new notifications, even an old-fashioned email - we never know what we'll get when we pick up our phone and pull the lever.
Faced with a sudden drop in likes, Leah is embarrassed to say she began buying ads on Facebook "just to get that attention back".
There's an irony behind her discomfort.
Before she was a comic artist, Leah was a Facebook developer, and in July 2007, her team invented the "like button".

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The concept is now ubiquitous across the web, from Facebook to YouTube to Twitter.
The benefit for platforms is obvious. A single click is the simplest way for users to engage - much easier than typing out a comment.
But the idea took a while to refine. As Leah Pearlman remembers, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg took some convincing.
Should it be called the "awesome" button? Did the symbol work?
While a thumbs-up means approval in most cultures, in others it has a much cruder meaning.