Instagram will test how to hide the likes of US users.
The publication on Instagram in New York (CNN) can come with a flood of validation when the “likes” of friends and strangers arrive. But those “likes” will soon be hidden for some American users.
In an attempt to reduce competitive pressure on the platform, Instagram will hide “likes” for “some” users in the United States starting next week, CEO Adam Mosseri said Friday. It is proof that the Facebook-owned platform (FB) has already been implemented in seven countries: Canada, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Brazil, Australia and New Zealand.
Now the United States will join the list.
I like them, or how many hearts a post receives, they will disappear from the user profile and Instagram feed pages. A user can still see how many likes he has received, but his followers will not know the count. Therefore, it is more difficult to compare whether your publication of a cute dog is receiving more traction than a friend’s cat photo.
Mosseri said the measure is aimed at young people. “The idea is to depressurize Instagram, make it less competitive,” he said, in statements made at the Wired 25 Conference.
Speaking at the Wired 25 conference in San Francisco, Mosseri estimated that there were a few hundred people in the audience and said some of them would definitely see their hidden tastes.
Social media companies have been pressured to adopt a more proactive approach both to monitor content on their platforms and to manage the so-called “screen addiction.”
So far, some users have expressed their relief from the movement to hide likes.
But changes could also be a blow to smaller influencers who relied on a large number of likes to attract brand offers. While I like them may be hidden, Instagram still has another metric: the count of followers. For influential people who create content that generally receives a lot of likes but who do not necessarily have a large following, they might see that the competition moves to a metric in which they are not working so well.
“We have to see how it affects how people feel about the platform,” Mosseri said, “I’ve spent a lot of time personally on this.”