Instagram Likes Soon to be Hidden; The Company Aims at Removing the Pressure of Likes from its Users
YouTube and Instagram have helped millions of creators and influencers to build a huge audience base for them. Thanks to the likes on the videos and the Instagram posts that show the creators how many people are into their content and are following them. But soon, Instagram is going to hide the likes feature on the platform.
The company has been testing a feature that hides public “Like” counts since this April. First, it got the feature to Canada for the testing, and from Wednesday, it will also start testing the same for the users from six other countries, i.e., Ireland, Italy, Japan, Brazil, Australia, and New Zealand.
Through the test, Instagram will start hiding the number of likes that a post will receive from the users. Also, the number of times a video has been viewed will not be visible to people. But yes, the users who have received the likes, and the views, will have access to the ‘numbers’ and can see it under their posts.-
According to an Instagram spokesperson, the company does not want its users to have any kind of pressure of getting more likes and wants the followers to focus on the photos/videos of a user shares, not how many likes they get.
The company first announced about testing the new feature at Facebook’s annual developer conference. It also tweeted about the same, saying, “looking forward to learning more about how this change might benefit everyone’s experience on Instagram.”
The response to the tweet was a mix of opinions, where some of the people did not even care about the likes, the influencers showed their disappointment, as their business depends only on how many followers and likes they have.
Along with ‘hiding the likes’ feature, the company is also taking another step to strengthen its moderation techniques, as it now will be sending an alert message to a user who has violated any of the guidelines on Instagram, and their account is close to getting shut.
The company will properly give the users the reference of the post, story or the comment, that caused the violation and got deleted. With the alert, the platform will provide the users with a chance to apply for reviewing the content through the help page on Instagram.
“To start, appeals will be available for content deleted for violations of our nudity and pornography, bullying and harassment, hate speech, drug sales, and counter-terrorism policies, but we’ll be expanding appeals in the coming months,” the company said. “If the content is found to be removed in error, we will restore the post and remove the violation from the account’s record.”
This way, the users will get the full clarity on why their account is getting closed, and they can also object on the decision. Also, Instagram will be able to make people think before posting anything offensive over the platform.
Yashica is a Software Engineer turned Content Writer, who loves to write on social causes and expertise in writing technical stuff. She loves to watch movies and explore new places. She believes that you need to live once before you die. So experimenting with her life and career choices, she is trying to live her life to the fullest.