"Likes" have an impact on trending: Posts would become visible (appear on trending) when they have many "likes" and many "upvotes" or many "likes" but no or a low amount of "upvotes" or few likes but many "upvotes"
I'm somewhat sympathetic to this idea. But I have to wonder how long it would take for someone to throw together a marketplace for likes. That's why I think there should be an dislike button as well. Another issue is that since Hive has no KYC, anyone can create as many alt accounts for voting as they like. In fact, for large stakeholders creating alts is very easy because account creation tickets are something that possession of resource credits confer.
On Hive, you vote with capital (stake) because that's the only honest way to vote when there is no KYC ensuring one man = one vote.
Even on Web 2.0 platforms upvote farming is a thing, which is why voting with money is the purest and most authentic system imaginable without going into centralized solutions.
Thanks for the feedback! A dislike button could be introduced as well of course... It's the idea I want to get out.
You are right on the abuse part, but this problem is unavoidable and exists for all sites out there. I also don't think this would be too much of a problem as we could balance it with the "upvote" votes (i.e., make "upvotes" have a stronger impact for trending). The idea is to combine both systems to get the best of both worlds
Voice has gone a long way to try and mitigate it.