Social media platform X has made likes by its users private.
“This week we’re making Likes private for everyone to better protect your privacy,” its engineering account announced Tuesday. “You will still be able to see posts you have liked (but others cannot). Like count and other metrics for your own posts will still show up under notifications. You will no longer see who liked someone else’s post. A post’s author can see who liked its posts.”
Users who logged into the platform since the change were greeted with a pop-up notification to explain the change. X owner Elon Musk shared activity from the platform since then and implied it has only helped users become more active. The chart showed that in the hours after the change likes were up above 18,000 per minute and even as high as 22,000 when the week before likes struggled to reach above 18,000.
“Massive increase in likes after they were made private!” Musk wrote.
Previously, users could see posts liked by those they follow appear on their timelines. Additionally, each profile had a tab that showed a list of all the posts liked by that account. X claimed that eliminating likes from its suggested posts on timelines “will make your For you timeline better.”
X already had the option to bookmark posts, which users could save in a separate list that always remained private. That function remains while also allowing all users to see how many times a post was bookmarked.
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Instagram implemented a similar function in 2021 that allows its users to hide the number of likes their posts have. Users can also hide the number of likes from all the accounts they follow. However, even when this option is active, the likers of the post are public. The move was meant to “depressurize people’s experience on Instagram” instead of being in the name of privacy.
YouTube also hid its dislikes across all its videos but continues to broadcast the number of likes videos receive. Its move away from dislikes, while still allowing users to dislike a video, was meant to protect videos from being unfairly bombarded with dislikes.
