Social media can be a toxic place that has detrimental effects on your mental health. Several studies have been done on the subject and to curb this, social networks are often looking for ways to improve the experience.
One of the ways Instagram and its parent company Facebook have been experimenting with this is by hiding like counts. Over the past couple of years, both companies have done limited testing of the feature and it is now available for the public to use.
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If you enjoy the like counts or rely on them as a creator, then don’t worry, Facebook and Instagram have made the feature opt-in. During testing, the companies found that while some users found hiding the like count beneficial, others were not quite as receptive to the change.
We tested hiding like counts to see if it might depressurize people’s experience on Instagram. What we heard from people and experts was that 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.
Not only is hiding likes optional, but there is also some granular control over what posts will have likes hidden. For example, you can enable hiding likes in the settings to hide it on all posts on the site or you can just hide likes on a singular post. This can be enabled when you first make the post or it can be switched on after the post goes live.
To start hiding likes, go to the Settings menu and locate the new Posts section. From here you can toggle on hiding like and view counts.
Hiding likes and view counts are just the latest way Facebook and Instagram have attempted to make its platforms more palatable to use. The social media giants have also enabled ways to filter offensive content in DMs and given users more controls over who can see or comment on your posts. In the future, the companies will continue conducting research and looking for new ways to improve users’ experiences on the sites.
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