Elon Musk's X could start hiding likes on public posts from today: Report

X, formerly known as Twitter, could hide likes on posts from June 12, reported US-based consumer technology news platform The Verge. According to the report, likes by the premium subscribers of the social media platform were already hidden, but now the feature is being rolled out widely. Elon Musk, owner of X, has also reshared a tweet with a screenshot of the news.

After the feature is implemented, the Likes tab on users profile will be gone. Likes count will still be active and you will be able to see the number of likes on your post but the likes on other people’s posts will be hidden. You have the option to hide likes manually but with this feature will be hidden by default for all. There is still no clarity if view count will be visible.

The new feature arrives after Elon Musk reportedly told the engineers at X that he wanted to remove the tweet action buttons and wanted to shift focus to impressions.

The hiding of likes is a way to let users protect their public image. Haofei Wang, Director of Engineering at X in May had confirmed the move stating public likes are incentivising wrong behaviour on the platform. He also added, “many people feel discouraged from liking content that might be “edgy” in fear of retaliation from trolls, or to protect their public image”.

Enrique Barragan, senior software engineer had also taken to X to clarify that users will be able to see the number of posts and replies on their own post but likes of users will not be visible on other posts.

Likes impact the algorithm and the user is shown similar posts to the one that is liked most and this feature will result in curation of a timeline similar to their interests.