That's an interesting point. Maybe this would be as harmless as you think. I'd like to discuss it further.
Please do; absent tangible side effects, I've been genuinely baffled at how this can be gamed.
Suppose we had a per-post Helpful button displaying the total for each post but not showing any summary data anywhere on FT. Considering just OMNI/PR, what other worst-case scenarios can we think of? Everyone please chime in, because I virtually never visit OMNI/PR. I need the expertise of regular participants there.
I'd prefer the likes on a given post to be non-anonymous (or perhaps, like Facebook, aggregating plus a click through for the full list if you get more than a couple likes.) I don't think anonymous totals give as much value, since it doesn't at that point substitute for a "+1" posts, etc.
I'm not sure what the down side to having a relatively discreet aggregate number (e.g. on the profile page), although I don't see that there's any gain to it, either.
Where this gets dangerous would be if IB started a "trending posts" (which got a lot of likes) or started prioritizing posts by likes rather than chronologically, or if there's a downvote option (not sure which is worse, anonymous or not, but both have serious downsides.)