Personally I don't really care for it. It sometimes feels like too much Facebook/Social Media feature creep to me. So unless I totally can't scrape together 4 words and 25 characters, that are on topic, to contribute to the conversation at the immediate moment, I avoid clicking the like button if I can say something productive and positive instead and keep with the topic.
Sometimes I would just rather post something complimenting the post and then find myself forced to think of something on topic to say, even if it isn't much rather than just Liking the post. So I reserve my likes for high quality posts that I can't really reply to without it being considered spam, off-topic or otherwise too short. I do this because that's the intention I believe the system has. It's some feedback you can give if there's not much you can say.
Post comments are good, but they're private, so they're really only good for a quick little minor neutral or helpful critique, or saying something totally nice and offtopic quietly from behind a mask.
As far as receiving likes, I do appreciate them. I don't check on them often, but when I do check and find new ones, it does make me feel better. Of course I honestly couldn't care if anyone likes my posts or not, but a like or two never hurts, and they are positive feedback.
