Instagram’s CEO announced on Twitter that they will test hiding US users’ likes on November 8th. Facebook owned platform has already rolled out to seven countries from July: Canada, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Brazil, Australia and New Zealand.
If the test goes well, they will hide like counts and only YOU can see how many likes you got not publicly. Also they are testing hiding likes on Facebook as well from this September.
Likes, or how many hearts a post gets, will disappear from Instagram’s feed and user profile pages. A user can still see how many likes they’ve received, but their followers won’t know the count.
Like many of you, Cardi had some thoughts on the prospect of hidden likes. According to her, there are much bigger problems plaguing the platform.
“It’s a big ruckus right now that the likes on Instagram are getting taken away,” she said in a Friday night Instagram post. “… This is my opinion on it, right? So from the beginning of Instagram, we had likes. And I feel like in the beginning of Instagram, everything was so fun, people wanted to post their pictures, get likes … where I think that Instagram got a little nasty, and it just took a weird turn, was when people started to like the comments, when they were allowed to like comments or reply back to somebody’s comments.”
Cardi reiterated a longstanding concern over the toxicity that lives within the comments section.
“That’s when I feel like when people started sayin’ nasty things … somebody would just say something so vile because … they want comments back,” she continued. “Some people don’t have a life … I see a lot of people dedicate they time into sayin’ some of the craziest, most absurd shit on comments, just for likes and comments back. And I feel like that’s what’s messing up Instagram.”
Cardi also recognized that the comments section has kept some users from expressing their views, as they don’t want to risk getting attacked because they had a different opinion.
“If anything is affecting Instagram right now, it’s the way the comments have been done or have been changing these past few years,” the rapper said. “I feel people been sayin’ the most weirdest shit, been starting the craziest arguments, been starting to race bait … because they want to get to the top, they want to get the most reactions. And that’s what I feel: The comments effect more than the likes.”
