Since the forum functions fine for discussion without likes or post votes, there must be a reason why this issue was grown from the original post where a member opined that such a system could cut down on extraneous posts which do nothing more than like a previous post.

I won't speak for IB and don't know the political matrix of FT; in the case of our forum, our site owner initiated the like system and share system (scripts for sharing posts with social media) to grow the forum's commercial aspects, both to increase his incremental revenues from ads as well as to maintain and grow the forum's ranking in its class, as it is currently at or near (depends on reporting period) the highest search engine ranking in its subject matter.

If this is totally member-driven, please disregard. In our case, the members didn't care at all but, well, given a new toy, it got played with, some using it to build and others to tear down. Human nature I guess.