Social Media Platform X Will Hide Likes From Posts

Haofei Wang, X’s Director of Engineering, has confirmed through the social media platform that “likes” will soon become a private feature, meaning only authors of the posts will be able to see them. The information was disclosed after MacRumors researcher Aaron Perris shared images of the new look on X after enabling the new feature that hides the likes on the iOS application.

“Yeah, we are making likes private,” wrote Wang referencing Perris’ post. “Public likes are incentivizing the wrong behavior. For example, many people feel discouraged from liking content that might be ‘edgy’ in fear of retaliation from trolls, or to protect their public image.”

Wang explains that by protecting users’ likes privacy, they will have more freedom and it will help the algorithm provide more relevant content. Currently, anyone on the platform can go to a user’s profile and see their likes in chronological order.

“Soon you’ll be able to like without worrying who might see it. Also, a reminder that the more posts you like, the better your ‘For you’ algorithm will become,” wrote Wang.

User Opinions on the New Update

This new update was reported only days after X changed Twitter’s URL to X.com, and is part of an ongoing, complex rebranding process that has already made multiple users debate and rage. This time many reacted and shared opinions and concerns.

“Or, hear me out, you can leave it the way it is since literally nobody asked for this,” commented one user on Wang’s post. “I’m okay with this for other people’s posts but it’s really important that people can see who liked their posts,” said another one, “kill the dopamine, kill the app.”

Enrique Barragan, X Senior Software Engineer, joined the discussion to provide more details. Barragan explained that the authors will be able to see who liked their posts, as well as like counts and replies, but will not be able to see who liked someone else’s post or a user’s Like tab on their X profile.

Scientific studies do actually show that social media’s success is very much a result of the dopamine-inducing ability to get the most like possible. “Every notification, whether it’s a text message, a “like” on Instagram, or a Facebook notification, has the potential to be a positive social stimulus and dopamine influx,” explains a document from Harvard’s Science in the News.

But X is not the first platform to make adjustments to the likes feature. A few years ago, Instagram also updated the likes feature to let users hide their likes count to “depressurize people’s experience.”

X has not disclosed when this big change will happen nor made an official announcement, but since two members of the company have confirmed the update publicly, users should expect this new change soon.