One of the internet’s most recognizable icons—the Facebook thumbs-up—will soon vanish from websites outside of Facebook itself.

Meta has announced that the Facebook Like and Comment buttons, once embedded on millions of external sites as social plugins, will be officially discontinued on February 10, 2026. The company revealed this decision in a developer blog post authored by Thuan Le and Jennifer Lin, stating the move is part of its effort to “focus on tools and features that deliver the most value to developers and businesses.”

These external widgets enabled users to like or comment on articles and product pages without leaving a site, with those interactions automatically shared back to Facebook.

By 2026, however, they’ll be gone for good. Meta explained that the plugins will “gracefully degrade to a 0x0 pixel element (an invisible placeholder)” rather than break any websites. While no action is required from developers, Meta suggests removing the legacy code “for a cleaner user experience.”

According to Meta, this change aligns with its broader initiative to modernize its developer platform. The company described the plugins as reflective of “an earlier era of web development” and noted their usage has “naturally declined as the digital landscape has evolved.”

The Quiet End of an Early Social Web Symbol

For many, this marks a subtle but meaningful closing chapter in the story of the social internet.

Since the early 2010s, these plugins served as a digital bridge between websites and Facebook’s social graph—a network that once defined how people interacted online. However, amid privacy scandals, stricter regulations, and the rise of new platforms reshaping user behavior, the Like and Comment buttons gradually lost their relevance.

Importantly, the Facebook Like button itself isn’t going away—it will remain active within Facebook. What’s ending is its long-standing presence across the open web.

Meta’s decision to retire the external Like and Comment buttons signifies the conclusion of a once-influential, now-fading chapter of internet history. Once a universal symbol of online approval, the Like button played a pivotal role in making the web more social and interconnected.