Facebook's Instagram will begin testing hiding "likes" from U.S. viewers next week.
At the Wired25 conference, Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri announced, "We're testing making like counts private". Mosseri also said, “We will make decisions that hurt the business if they help people’s well-being and health”. In the proposed scenario, only a post’s creator will be able to view the count of likes on it, but no one else will.
Instagram hopes that testing the concept would help the company understand how the change affects the way people feel about the platform, how it affects how they use the platform, and how it affects the creator ecosystem. Apparently, Instagram intends to “reduce anxiety” and “reduce social comparison”.