I often see people use the noun with quotes:
We have received a lot of "likes."
rather than:
We have received a lot of likes.
Why is this done?
Learn English – Why is “like” as in Facebook likes often put between quotes
internetnounspunctuationsocial-media
Related Solutions
Well, this is an example of why Google NGrams isn't a precise indicator. When we compare the two directly, aircrafts simply can't get off the ground:
Now, this result is also flawed since it is impossible to separate uses of aircraft (singular) and aircraft (plural). It is also impossible to factor out typos (aircrafts vs. aircraft's) and so on.
The point is, don't read too much into what an NGram shows (or at least take the graphs with a grain of salt), because a great deal of the time what you wind up with is this sort of thing:
(BTW, the huge spike in the use of aircraft in the early '40s is almost certainly due to the air war in Europe and the Pacific.)
At http://englishplus.com/grammar/00000135.htm is found the following:
Apostrophes with Italicized or Underlined Items:
Letters, numbers, symbols, and words used as themselves are italicized or underlined. ...
When these items are made plural, the plural is shown by adding apostrophe s to the underlined or italicized item. The apostrophe and s are not italicized or underlined. ...
I find the thee's and thou's in older writing hard to follow. (Words as words)
Lynne Truss also cites this usage in Eats, Shoots and Leaves.
(Unlike the first source above, Truss mentions the fact that there a few pure plurals allowed by some authorities to include apostrophes.)
Notice that these are talking about general, not Facebook-specific, English usages.
PS: My choice of like in the other thread is probably best regarded as arbitrary. Here is a parallel example: 'There are too many hamburger's in your essay.'
Best Answer
Usually I see that in cases to divorce the action of clicking Like on facebook from meaning a person truly likes the topic at hand.
Consider a posting of a tragedy. Many people may click Like, not to imply they enjoy the tragedy, but to raise attention to the situation.
In other cases it might be the author just isn't familiar enough with the platform to identify it as a first class object as to say "We have received a lot of things that are known as likes".