Don’t freak out if you aren’t seeing any likes on Instagram. The social media giant is testing hiding likes on posts in the U.S. It’s all in an effort, says the Facebook-owned company to make Instagram “safer.”
Instagram has already tested hiding ‘like’ counts in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Ireland, Italy, Japan, and New Zealand. Now it’s about to happen in the U.S.
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“Instagram isn’t the only company that is attempting to remove publicly-available engagement metrics from their platform. Facebook (which owns Instagram), Twitter, and YouTube have all experimented with removing engagement metrics from their platforms,” Wired‘s reported.
Still, users aren’t too happy about the move. Among “other complaints, note that hiding engagement metrics will make it harder to determine whose follower count is legitimate,” Wired reported.
When Wired’s Arielle Pardes spoke with Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri and actor and producer Tracee Ellis Ross, who recently launched Pattern Beauty, a curly hair care company, some of the concerns about hiding likes were discussed. For some companies, such as Pattern Beauty, Instagram sales serve as their main source of revenue.
According to Mosseri, the move is to help stop online bullying. “It means we’re going to put a 15-year-old kid’s interests before a public speaker’s interest,” he said. “When we look at the world of public content, we’re going to put people in that world before organizations and corporations.”
Ross agreed, “As much as I love a high roller,” she said, laughing, “I think it has adverse effects. It creates a culture that isn’t helpful for well-being and isn’t fruitful for creative energy.”
Mosseri said the move is aimed at young people. “The idea is to depressurize Instagram, make it less of a competition,” he said, in remarks given at the Wired 25 Conference.
Still, this could hurt influencers and small businesses.
“But the changes could also be a blow to smaller influencers who relied on large numbers of likes to attract brand deals. While likes may become hidden, Instagram still has another metric: the follower count. For the influencers who make content that usually get a lot of likes but don’t necessarily have large amounts of followers, they could see the competition move to a metric that they’re not performing as well in,” CNN reported.
