Want to hide your likes on Instagram? This tool has officially rolled out

Social media users would have already noticed that since April, Instagram has been testing ‘hiding like counts’. On May 26, the photo- and video-sharing site owned by Facebook Inc, announced that everyone on Instagram and Facebook will now have the option to hide their public like counts, so they can decide what works for them. Users can also choose to hide like counts on their posts, so others cannot see how many likes a given post gets.

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The move was first announced in November 2019, at Wired25 in San Francisco. Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri had announced that US audiences would be the first testing grounds for the ‘hiding likes’ feature.

“We tested hiding like counts to see if it might de-pressurise people’s experience” on social media, says a company blog post. Instagram communicated with users and experts through these trials and learned “not seeing like counts was beneficial for some, and annoying to others, particularly because people use like counts to get a sense for what’s trending or popular, so we’re giving you the choice,” the post elaborates. “Changing the way people view like counts is a big shift. We’ll continue working on new ways to give people more choice, so they feel good about the time they spend on our apps.”

The company adds that what one person wants from their Instagram experience is different from the next, and people’s needs are changing, emphasising the need to democratise these online spaces as much as possible.

Facebook, too, has been releasing tools for netizens to customise the content they are exposed to; this can range from Direct Messages to the Facebook News Feed, with the latter having tools such as the ‘Feed Filter Bar’, ‘Favorites Feed’ and ‘Choose Who Can Comment.’

How to: You can hide like counts on others’ posts by visiting the new Posts section in Settings. This control applies to all the posts in your feed.

One can also choose to hide like counts before sharing a post. Users can turn this setting on or off, even after it goes live, so be sure to have the latest updated version of Instagram, and in the next few weeks, users will see both of these controls come to Facebook.

Community building

Instagram says they are currently funding more external research about people’s experiences on the platform, diving into improvements around policy and products. They are also requesting research proposals from global academics and non-profits.

Closer to home, another move to support mental health discourses on social media, Instagram and Facebook also recently collaborated with India’s Young Leaders for Active Citizenship (YLAC) to initiate the fifth edition of the ‘Counter Speech Fellowship’. This is a program engaging creative teenagers to use the power of visual storytelling to start meaningful conversations on issues that are important to young citizens around the world. This includes the themes of bullying, diversity, mental well-being and gender equality.