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For good or for bad, X is starting to hide users’ likes.
Hidden likes, which are already an option for X’s Premium subscribers, are being rolled out as soon as today, The Verge reported, citing an unnamed source familiar with the matter. X’s owner Elon Musk seemingly confirmed the reporting by resharing a post of the article.
“Important to allow people to like posts without getting attacked for doing so,” Musk wrote on X.
In May, Haofei Wang, director of engineering at X, said the platform was planning to make likes private.
“Public likes are incentivizing the wrong behavior,” Wang wrote in a post. “For example, many people feel discouraged from liking content that might be ‘edgy’ in fear of retaliation from trolls, or to protect their public image.” Users would soon able to like posts “without worrying who might see it,” Wang added.
Enrique Barragan, senior software engineer at X, wrote in a follow-up post after Wang’s that users would still be able to see who liked their posts and like counts, but would not be able to see who liked someone else’s posts or the “Liked” tab on profiles.
Last year, Musk told X engineers he wanted to remove all action buttons on posts and instead emphasize post views, or impressions, The Verge reported, citing an unnamed source familiar with the matter. Musk reportedly wanted to remove the like and repost action buttons because he didn’t think likes were important.
“Social media in general is shifting away from like counts, so this makes sense,” the source told The Verge. “Part of me thinks [Musk] just wants to disassociate from Twitter more and more.”
After Musk took over X, formerly known as Twitter, in October 2022, studies have found that hate and similar types of speech have surged on the platform.