Facebook and Instagram Likes: Users Will Make the Final Choice

What happened?

These days Facebook and Instagram have launched a feature that allows users to hide “likes” under the posts.

Why?

Both services believe that open “like” counters can be frustrating for users.  Removing them will allow people to pay more attention to the content they publish than to the reaction it provokes.

Throughout the testing, it was figured out that for some people, hiding likes was acceptable, while others were annoyed. The irritation was largely due to the fact, that they were using “likes” to get the idea of what is popular at the moment. In light of these findings, it was decided to give the option of hiding likes to the users.

What to do?

On Instagram, “likes” are visible by default. It is necessary to go to the app’s settings and turn off their counts. Before sharing, or even after the post goes live, you can choose the hide option for “likes.” as well. On Facebook, users access the new setting from the “Settings & Privacy” option.

Even though the metric for “likes” will stop being used publicly, people can still follow it through analytics, just like other ways of interacting with their content.

Expectations

Instagram has been testing different options with “likes” since 2019 and has said its own research found out that the feature change had mixed results. Looks like there is a high probability, that these tweaks will not do as much as expected to improve users’ feelings.

You can check the article here or watch the news on the topic for more detailed information.