Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, announced on Twitter that Instagram is introducing a new feature called “Private Story Likes,” which allows Instagram users to like a Story without the platform sending a direct message to the Story’s author.
Before the Private Story Likes feature, to respond to a Story you could only send a direct message or an emoji reaction to the creator of the Story and when you reacted to someone’s Story, they always received a response in their DM inbox.
Users who have the Private Story Likes feature may now notice a new heart icon located between the Send Message field and the paper airplane sharing button when watching someone’s Story.
Also, the likes you receive or give on stories will be private and won’t have public counts, which means that only you will be able to see who liked your Story. If you want to see who liked your Story, you need to go to the viewer sheet of that particular Story, and there you will see a heart icon next to every viewer who liked your Story.
According to Adam Mosseri, Instagram’s idea for the Private Story Likes feature is for ‘people to express more support to each other’ and also to ‘clean up DMs a little bit.’ Adam Mosseri explained that Instagram’s goal is to make DMs more focused on conversations between you and your friends.