Instagram freaked out so many users this week when it all of a sudden, as it states ‘unintentionally’ rolled out its test of the hidden post-like counts to a lot of users.
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We've been testing a new experience to hide likes on Feed posts. We unintentionally added more people to the test today, which was a bug — we’re fixing this issue and restoring like counts to those people as soon as possible.
— Instagram Comms (@InstagramComms) March 3, 2021
Instagram has been testing out this hidden like counts feature for a while now. Instagram Chief Adam Mosseri has given some details about the hidden likes project and why is this still going, in spite of being run for the last year in several regions.
Live Rooms & Private Like Counts ?
This week we unintentionally launched private like counts to a lot of people, our apologies. The idea is clearly polarizing, so we’re looking for a way to bring the idea to people who want it and not to those who don’t.#thisweekoninstagram pic.twitter.com/aS0p4tkDfV
— Adam Mosseri ? (@mosseri) March 5, 2021
As stated by Mosseri, the test has been started again recently due to disturbances caused by COVID-19. This is why we saw such a sudden expansion of the hidden likes this week which was not planned. He also states that it is an ongoing project and this is a part of the broader experiment.
Clearly it’s a very polarizing idea, so right now, what we’re looking is, is there a way for us to bring private like counts to those who are interested in it and not those who aren’t, so expect more from us on that in the next month or maybe two.
Instagram has been working out on this option also in January as spotted by Alessandro Paluzzi who shared pictures of his finding a new feature that will allow users to hide like counts on their posts.
You can hide the like count directly during post creation by going to the "Advanced settings" section ? pic.twitter.com/SUExGWNaDB
— Alessandro Paluzzi (@alex193a) January 14, 2021
Conclusion
Instagram rather than not displaying the like counts at all, will provide users the option to have control over this display. It is hard to say if this would be a positive or negative move by Instagram. As of now, Instagram has given the justification so if you got spooked by losing the likes counts this week, you can be assured now that they are not going away permanently.
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