Often times, when Instagram tests a new feature, it’s very likely that its parent company, Facebook, will follow its lead. We saw it with the adoption of stories, we saw it with the integration of disappearing photo and video messages, and we saw it with the addition of camera filters. Now, such is the case with Instagram’s attempt to diminish social media’s negative impact on mental health by removing like counts.
Hide likes?
This new feature became known to the public through Jane Manchun Wong, a well-known reverse engineer who according to her Twitter profile focuses on “uncovering unreleased features before they become relevant.” She ultimately discovered that Facebook has begun testing like count removals on its Android app. It’s still unclear whether this feature will go live or even be tested on a wider public, but for now, in an interview with TechCrunch, Facebook confirmed its consideration of removing like counts from users´ posts.
While hidden likes are still in its testing stages for Instagram, a push forward towards adopting this feature on Facebook seems to indicate that hiding likes on posts have yielded positive results. Instagram first started testing this feature in April in certain countries, and then expanded its testing locations five months later. The countries where this feature is currently being tested are Canada, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, Italy, Ireland, and Japan. Mixed feelings have come up regarding the impact that hiding likes will have on social media as a whole. On one hand, this shift could have the potential to decrease the detrimental effects that social media has on its audiences such as increased senses of inadequacy and high degrees of competitiveness all derived from users engaging in the comparison game. By taking away like counts, users would be able to focus on the content itself, rather than content popularity. On the other hand, we have marketers, advertisers, and influencers who frequently rely on likes as an important KPI to measure post engagement and value. While other KPI’s exist to measure engagement, likes tend to be a rather quickly countable measurement that marketers rely on, and thus could possibly affect ad spend on social media platforms. Regardless of whether you´re an average user, a marketer, or an advertiser, hiding likes will mean a shift towards community building and higher quality content.
According to TechCrunch, hiding likes could also help conceal and even improve Facebook´s decline in popularity. Since mob mentality tends to influence what people like, and lower amounts of likes will be less apparent, more people will be incentivized to come back to the platform to post and engage as there is less pressure for posts to perform.
If testing is implemented on Facebook and continued on Instagram it will be interesting to compare results on both platforms, if results are ever released. Regardless, the removal of likes could mean a huge change in social media dynamics and behavior for all types of users. It might just be what the industry needs to go back to its roots: a simple time where social media was solely used for connecting and sharing.
Source: techcrunch.com