It’s trivially obvious that this change is not an improvement for users since it removes valuable information, as clearly indicated by the large amount of negative feedback on here.
OKCupid, POF, Match, Tinder and others, are all part of the Match Group conglomerate of dating sites, which trade under the MTCH ticker on NASDAQ. As a globally traded company, they’re under pressure to constantly increase revenue, which in practical terms means amassing more paying users. MTCH *missed* the street 2Q forecasts a week ago, so they are under extra pressure to up revenue right now.
So, plain and simple, this is an attempt to try to get more people to sign up for a paid account, since the paid-feature of “seeing likes” is now the only way to gauge interests of others, now that visitors are removed.
Additionally, MTCH doesn’t really care that they’re making OKC less useful to users, because they pretty much have a monopoly on dating sites (with a few exceptions) so even if users leave and go somewhere else, they’re still likely to be users of a MTCH site. (Bumble is an example of a non-MTCH owned dating app.)