In July 2019, Instagram began testing removing like counts on users posts after announcing it at their Facebook’s annual developer conference with a motive to lessen the pressure on the platform.
The company rolled this test to select countries including Canada, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Brazil, Australia, and New Zealand.
In November that year, this feature went global as the giant photo and video sharing platform removed the like count for all users.
Instagram had become a a popularity contest platform and Instagram was hoping to hide the number of likes a post gets will let its users post more authentic posts rather than posting the perfect photo to garner more likes.
Strangely enough, people loved the hidden likes – only the person who posted could see the total amount of who liked their post.
“BEFORE IT FELT LIKE ONE HUGE COMPETITION AND NOW IT’S RELAXING AND FREEING.”
Another unexpected turn was seeing teens switching their profiles from private to business/creator account to access their analytics. This was so dangerous to them as you now have to give up your contact information including phone number and email that can be accessed by the public. This switch comes with unintended privacy consequences.
Instagram is now working to make this feature optional for users.
In screenshots posted on Twitter by app researcher Alessandro Paluzzi, Instagram will soon allow its users to select either to hide or unhide the like count on their posts.
Unhiding the like count would let your followers know how many likes your post got.
In the screenshots, Instagram will either include this feature before you post or enable it in settings for future posts.
It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out this year.
