Elon Musk's X

Elon Musk has decided to remove public likes, a move that elicited mixed reactions from its users.

TECHNOLOGY

Earning Owl

5/25/20241 min read

Director of Engineering at X, Haofei Wang, acknowledged the impending modification by saying, "Yes, we are making likes private."

Users won't be able to see on their accounts which posts other people have liked after public likes are gone.

The X app for iOS has a new option that hides the likes tab on users' profiles. MacRumors researcher Aaron Perris was the first to report this update. Wang clarified, saying "Wrong behaviour is being encouraged by public likes. For fear of troll revenge or to preserve their reputation, many people are deterred from like stuff that could be deemed "edgy."

Wang explained that by making likes private, users would be able to connect with each other more freely and the recommendations made by the For You algorithm will be better. But there were a lot of unanswered questions in the announcement.

According to X's Senior Software Engineer, Enrique Barragan, users would still be able to see who liked their articles. Users will also be able to see how many people have liked postings and replies, he added.

Users won't be able to see who liked other people's postings, which is the primary change. Furthermore, a tab displaying every post a user has liked won't exist.

Unlike a lot of Musk's earlier statements, this adjustment appears to be ready for implementation. Although hiding likes has previously been possible for Premium subscribers on X, this update will take away that feature for all users.

According to Wang, the objective is to shield people from any criticism for enjoying information that is contentious.