Some Twitter and Instagram users read a lot into the number of Likes a certain tweet or post receives. For example, subscribers to both social media apps might decide to skip certain tweets or posts that don’t amass many Likes, considering them to be recommendations. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said last year that he is not a fan of the Like button, and Twitter says that users trying to write posts that generate a large number of Likes could be trying to gain approval from their fellow posters. This would be a form of social-media addiction. As a result, we could see Twitter eventually remove the heart-shaped icon that readers of a tweet tap to show that they Like a message.
While neither Twitter nor Instagram is removing Likes just yet, Instagram is testing a new look that will prevent readers from seeing the number of Likes received by a post. The only one who will be able to get that number will be the person who actually wrote the message. This was discovered by the tireless Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane), who sent out a tweet with this information. Wong, who loves to “reverse engineer apps,” notes that Instagram writes, “We want your followers to focus on what you share, not how many likes your posts get.”
Based on the comments that Wong’s tweet received, apparently many are upset about this, especially since they believe that Instagram is removing Likes completely. Again, users will still have the ability to Like a post, but the author of the post will be the only one who sees how many each message has received. And again, this is only a test and we have no idea when or if Instagram will eventually roll out this update to all of its users.