However, big name social media companies such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter have been toying with the idea of dispensing with publicly viewable like counts, something that could potentially end up vastly changing the manner in which we end up interacting with content on the internet.
It seems that the latest company that is considering doing away with publicly viewable engagement metrics is going to be Instagram, and the fact that it is owned by Facebook is probably something that is playing a pretty important role in this.
One reason behind why Instagram is going to try and hide engagement metrics on a few select accounts in order to test it out before rolling it out to every account on the platform has to do with how engagement metrics affect the conversations that people have on the internet.
Whenever someone sees something that they disagree with, they often end up disliking it. Groups of people attack videos that they don’t agree with and dislike it en masse and leave rude or derogatory comments as well. These are the things that Instagram is trying to prevent, although the absence of dislikes on the platform makes it slightly more confusing regarding what the platform hopes to achieve with this change.
Heads up! We've been testing making likes private on Instagram in a number of countries this year. We're expanding those tests to include a small portion of people in the US next week. Looking forward to the feedback!— Adam Mosseri (@mosseri) November 9, 2019
Photo: GettyImages
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