Elon Musk-owned X is going to remove the likes from your post and the Likes tab from your profile sometime this week. Musk hasn’t officially shared this timeline but recent developments hint at an imminent change for X users this week. The news about X hiding your likes was mentioned by The Verge in its recent article which was quote-posted by Musk saying, “Important to allow people to like posts without getting attacked for doing so!”
Important to allow people to like posts without getting attacked for doing so! https://t.co/3O1bG7wIGe— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 11, 2024
One of the official X engineering account shared the details about the new update which will be visible in the next few days. Here’s what the post on X from this profile says:
This week we’re making Likes private for everyone to better protect your privacy.
– 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.
As you can see from the list, X is not completely getting rid of the likes from the platform but it is keeping it discreet. You can see the posts that others have liked, but publicly your feed will not show any likes on posts. The personalised touch to likes can be a good decision but X as a platform has mostly made decisions that have criticised, and this could be the latest one on its list.
The rumours of the like tab going away came recently through one of the engineers at X . So, why is X going to remove the feature and also the Likes tab from our profile? “Public likes are incentivizing the wrong behavior. 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,” as said by Haofei Wang, X engineer on the platform.
Some people have felt that likes can be a way of bookmarking a post for future reading.
In fact, one of the biggest detractors of likes has been former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who was trying to see the point of this change and how it differs from a bookmark. To which, Wang said, “Like is visible between you and the author, the author will be notified, but not anyone else. Bookmark is only visible to you.”
Likes have been a big part of Twitter and now X’s identity which allows people to share their opinions or agree with a view without commenting on it. Likes have also created a sense of animosity among the crowd on the platform, which seems to be the reason why Musk is happy to start hiding your likes from the posts.
So, the next time you decide to like a post on X, chances are the world will not be able to see it to help you avoid becoming part of a controversial view which invites unwanted attacks and trolling.
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