Instagram to Test Hiding Likes in U.S. Starting Next Week
Written by SOURCE on November 9, 2019
Instagram is expanding its test to hide likes.
During Friday’s WIRED25 event, Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri announced a number of U.S. users would see the Instagram like counts disappear as soon as next week. Mosseri did not provide details on the scale of the test, simply stating it wouldn’t be “the whole U.S. at once.”
“There’s a couple of hundred people in here, so definitely a couple of you will have private likes, I hope,” he told the crowd, before explaining the reasoning behind the move. “… It’s about young people. The idea is to try to depressurize Instagram, make it less of a competition, give people more space to focus on connecting with people they love, things that inspire them. But it’s really focused on young people. We have to see how it affects how people feel about the platform, how it affects how they use the platform … but I’ve been spending a lot of time on this, personally.”
Instagram began started testing private likes among Canadian users back in the spring, and has since expanded to the test to six other countries, including Brazil, Italy, and Japan.
This story is being updated.
