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X Begins Hiding Likes From Profiles

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5 months ago

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X Begins Hiding Likes From Profiles

Topline

X began hiding likes from users’ public-facing profiles Wednesday, a day after owner Elon Musk confirmed the social media platform formerly known as Twitter will start automatically hiding users’ likes, saying it’s “important to allow people to like posts without getting attacked for doing so!”

Key Facts

Musk confirmed the change Tuesday afternoon in a post on X after The Verge first reported the site was “rolling out private likes as soon as today.”

On Wednesday, users began receiving a pop-up when they opened the site that read: “We are making Likes private for everyone to better protect your privacy.”

Haofei Wang, director of engineering at X, said in a post on the platform on May 21 that X would be making the switch, adding: “Public likes are incentivizing the wrong behavior … many people feel discouraged from liking content that might be ‘edgy’ in fear of retaliation from trolls, or to protect their public image.”

X senior software engineer Enrique Barragan also weighed in in late May, clarifying users would still be able to see like counts and who liked their posts, but will not be able to see the people who liked another user’s post or other users’ liked tabs anymore.

Last August, Musk allowed paid users to hide their likes as an incentive, and all other users still had a public facing “likes” page where people could go to see all posts they had liked.

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Key Background

Musk has made a number of changes to X since he bought it in October 2022 for $44 billion. He removed—and eventually reinstated—headlines from news articles posted on the platform in a push to get journalists to post their content directly on X, changed the name from Twitter to X in a push for it to become the “everything app” Musk has long dreamed of, removed the ability to block other users and introduced a premium plan that allows users to pay for more customization options, among other changes. After Musk bought the platform, he had an issue with advertisers leaving in bulk—and greatly reducing revenue—amid concerns of “brand safety issues, confusing policies, and broken technology,” according to Insider Intelligence.

Forbes Valuation

We estimate Musk to have a net worth of $211 billion, making him the wealthiest person in the world.

Tangent

The move to hide all users’ likes comes a little more than a week after X officially changed its policy to allow pornography on the platform. In the update, X said it will allow consensually produced adult pornographic content as long as it is “properly labeled and not prominently displayed.” Twitter had previously allowed porn, and Reuters reported in 2022 that adult content made up about 13% of Twitter.

Further Reading

ForbesElon Musk
The VergeX is about to start hiding all likes

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