- Instagram chief Adam Mosseri announced on Friday at Wired25 that the company will start hiding "likes" on some US posts.
- Instagram has already experimented with removing likes in seven countries.
- Instagram said in a tweet that the change would allow users to "focus on the photos and videos you share, not how many likes they get." Users will still be able to see likes on their own posts.
- Go to www.BusinessInsider.co.za for more stories.
If you live in the US, don't be surprised if you open Instagram this week without a "like" in sight.
Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri announced Friday at Wired25 that the platform will begin hiding "like" counts on posts this week, Adrienne So at Wired reported. At first, likes will disappear only for certain users as a test of the feature.
"We will make decisions that hurt the business if they help people's well-being and health," Mosseri said, according to Wired.
Instagram is already testing out hiding likes in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Ireland, Italy, Japan, and New Zealand, which began in July.
Likes aren't completely gone. You can still view the like count on your own photos and videos - just not posts from others.
In April, Adam Mosseri told BuzzFeed News that removing likes was "about creating a less pressurised environment where people feel comfortable expressing themselves."
Here is what Instagram looks like without likes, from Australian Instagram where this update has already rolled out:
Instagram isn't the only social-media platform to experiment with removing public metrics.
In September, Facebook, which owns Instagram, experimented with removing "like" counts on posts, and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has hinted at wanting to remove public "likes" from tweets for over a year now.
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