In a move that marks the end of an era for web-based social engagement, Meta has announced that it will deprecate the Facebook Like and Comment buttons for third-party websites starting February 10, 2026.
If you’ve been around the internet long enough, you’ll remember these small but omnipresent blue buttons, embedded on millions of blogs and news sites, letting users like or comment on content directly through their Facebook accounts. Even this website has long depended on them to distribute our content. Soon, they’ll quietly disappear.
According to Meta:
“On February 10, the plugins will gracefully degrade by rendering as a 0x0 pixel (invisible element) rather than causing errors or breaking your website functionality. This change is intended to only remove the plugin content from your site, and should not otherwise impact your website’s functionality.”
In other words, site owners won’t need to do anything, the buttons will simply stop working and vanish from view. Meta says the decision comes down to declining usage as the digital landscape evolves. And the honest truth: not many people still clicked on them.
That tracks with how social behavior has changed. Engagement today is no longer measured by explicit “likes” but by implicit interest, what users watch, linger on, or scroll past. TikTok was the real turning point here: its “For You” feed shifted social platforms away from follower-based ecosystems toward algorithmic discovery. Meta (and everyone else) followed.
So, while billions still use Facebook, the way they use it has fundamentally changed. External engagement loops, where a “Like” on a website fed back into your Facebook presence, simply don’t fit into the modern algorithmic model.
Still, it’s a symbolic moment. The Like button helped define early social media, a simple interaction that shaped how we validated content, creators, and ourselves. Its quiet removal from the wider web closes one of the earliest chapters of social connectivity online.
Web admins who want a cleaner user experience can remove the plugin code now. Everyone else can just wait. On February 10, 2026, the buttons will fade away.