What’s Happening with Instagram Likes?
It’s finally happening. After months of stipulation, Instagram is doing a trial run of removing the number of likes that a post gets.
Instagram announced earlier in the year that they were going to be testing a new update that would hide the number of likes on any post, influencer or not. They started the test overseas in countries like Ireland and Australia, but they have now taken it back home to America.
The idea comes from Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri.
When being interviewed on the topic by WIRED, he said that this change is for the young people. “The idea is to try and depressurize Instagram, make it less of a competition, give people more space to focus on connecting with people that they love, things that inspire them,” said Mosseri.
The change comes after talk of banning filters that give users the appearance of having face altering cosmetic surgery. The app has expressed concerns about what these filters can do to someone’s mental health and it seems like the same concerns were taken into consideration when they decided to begin the process of hiding likes.
Although Instagram wants to see how users will react to the removal of likes, the update won’t be for everyone. Only some US users can expect to see the change before it becomes official (if it ever does become official). It seems like users who are getting affected by the change were selected at random but would’ve been notified by a message at the top of their feed.
Even if you were selected to be a tester of the update, you can still like posts and see your own likes. In fact, you technically can still see anyone’s likes if you really care to.
The line that would normally tell you the specific numbers of likes a user received will now show “[name of person you follow] and others” which you can then click on and see exactly who liked the post, just not the number of how many.
The length of how long the test will go on for hasn’t been announced yet nor has the answer of whether or not Instagram will make this change official.
