Instagram is Testing a way to Hide the Number of Likes on Posts.
Instagram is the renowned photo and video sharing platform, owned by Facebook. It has emerged as one of the great platforms to share high-quality images related to your life.
Be it the latest destination trip, a mountain hike, or even your workplace, photos have started reaching out to millions of people. Especially celebrities have been very much ahead in the queue of sharing stuff from their lives, through Instagram. And it has also been evident that the app interface has improved over the years. Recently, you may have read that the app has been updated and the new interface doesn’t allow the users to see their public like count. An Instagram user will no longer be able to see the public like count under his uploaded photo or video.
Though this change has not been brought to action all around the World, but it was started in the month of May, from Canada. The users got a notification that Instagram wanted the followers to focus on what a user shares, and not the total likes which he gets. And therefore, during the testing period, a person would only be able to see the total number of Instagram likes over his shared content. Originally started in Canada, this test was further extended to six more countries which are Ireland, Italy, Japan, Brazil, Australia, and New Zealand.
This feature will not allow the user to see the Public like count on the web, on the wall, and even inside his own profile. As officially it has been confirmed by Instagram, that the main purpose of bring out these changes of hiding the score is to encourage people to post more content, as they will only get to see the total number of likes over a post and not the public like count, something to which our eyes had got familiar. And at the end, a person will only be able to judge the photo, over the total like count and that’s where the competition would become a bit simple, while also promoting quality content.
Proponents and opponents
However, as expected people had mixed reaction towards this change. Instagram had posted a tweet about this and most of the people didn’t like this new feature. There was disapproval from the users and they said that they never wanted such a change. It is especially so if the creators of content and those who dedicated their lives to insta-blogging and have the most of income from the platform and from their social life there are concerned. Their earnings are based on collecting and showing great numbers of likes in public, so obviously they are getting nervous. Also those who sell and buy Instagram likes do not consider this innovation something positive and it’s clear why. Though, there were some users who liked this change. And at the end, there were also some users who were quite neutral about it, and they were okay on the both the sides. There were tweets, in which people also complained of a change for the chronological order of the images, but Instagram officials came up with something completely different and something which users had not expected from their side.
From the recent studies, it also came out that the notifications which Instagram or any other social media application sends, related to likes and comments, has spoiled the whole show. Users are actually getting addicted to social media, due to the craze of getting the maximum number of likes, and that has actually disturbed their schedule.
Instagram likes are the main thing, for which most of the users, upload their content and they actually care less about other things. Collecting Instagram likes has been part of the trend and has also been the primary purpose of all the influencers, as on the basis of that, they created their fan base. And people who are entering the industry of business, and that too through Instagram, they might like this feature, as the users will only be able to see the total number of likes, and that in itself, is a straight comparison and that will help the spectators to decide which post they should like, and which handle they should follow.
However as of now, Instagram is looking forward to more and more responses, and the officials had pulled out a statement, which reads:
“We’re expanding the test to a number of countries to get a better sense of how the experience resonates with Instagram’s global community.”
Therefore, there’s still time for something concrete to come out.
