“In 2019, we started hiding like counts for a small group of people to understand if it lessens some pressure when posting to Instagram
For the people who are always concerned about the fact that they will be judged by the ‘like’ count on their social media posts, can have a relaxation from Instagram as the photo-sharing platform has recently revealed that it is experimenting with letting users hide the ‘like’ counts on their posts instead of completely disabling the feature for users.
This move by the Facebook-owned social media company will give its users the freedom to choose what they prefer – ‘likes’ or ‘no likes’. According to the AFP report obtained by Mashable India, if the option to hide ‘like’ counts becomes a hit among Instagram users, the company could also make the option permanent for the platform. In fact, Facebook will also be experimenting with a similar feature among its users.
“We’re testing this on Instagram to start, but we’re also exploring a similar experience for Facebook,” said the Facebook spokesperson.
At present, the photo-sharing platform’s experiment includes a small number of users across the globe who are free to decide whether they want to enable the ‘like’ counts option on their posts or not.
“In 2019, we started hiding like counts for a small group of people to understand if it lessens some pressure when posting to Instagram. Some people found this beneficial but some still wanted to see like counts so they could track what’s popular,” said a Facebook spokesperson.
The sole purpose of this experiment is to create a healthy space with less competition and comparison among people, as per the official reports obtained by Mashable India.
On the other hand, while this thought could be beneficial for people to have fewer mental health issues, influencers, in particular, have cited concerns around the move as they believe it will be difficult for them to keep track of what their users enjoy and in building relationships with brands.
However, Instagram addressed that the platform wants to shift the user’s and creator’s focus from numbers to the creation of organic valuable content.
