X Confirms Plan to Make 'Likes' Private, Remove Likes Tab From Profiles

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Social media platform X (formerly Twitter) will soon stop showing public "likes" on users' profile pages, the company has said. The plan was confirmed on Wedndesday by X engineers, after MacRumors contributor Aaron Perris uncovered a flag in X's iOS app revealing the coming change.

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Perris found that turning off the flag completely removes the "Likes" tab from all user profiles. His discovery was shared on X, which was then reposted and subsequently confirmed by X engineers.

"Yeah, we are making likes private," responded X's director of engineering Haofei Wang. "Public likes are incentivizing the wrong behavior. For example, many people feel discouraged from liking content that might be 'edgy' in fear of retaliation from trolls, or to protect their public image.

"Soon you'll be able to like without worrying who might see it," Wang continued. "Also a reminder that the more posts you like, the better your For you algorithm will become," he added.


To clear up some confusion among users, X senior software engineer Enrique Barragan also responded with a post, saying that users will still be able to see who liked their posts, as well as the like count for all posts, replies, and so on. The change involves hiding which posts other people liked, which means removing the Liked tab on public profiles.

X Premium subscribers have been able to optionally hide the Likes tab on their profile, but the platform is set to take it away wholesale. It's not clear when the change will be rolled out, but once it does, everyone on X, including owner Musk – who has received blowback in the past for liking controversial posts – will be able to like whatever they want without it being made public.

Tag: Twitter

Top Rated Comments

ItsASpider Avatar
ItsASpider
9 months ago
Now you can like all your racist conspiracies freely.
Score: 53 Votes (Like | Disagree)
ginkobiloba Avatar
ginkobiloba
9 months ago

I mean cancel culture did this. No one to blame but them.
I would say it's the entire social network business that is to blame. It encourages and amplifies the worst aspects of humans, allows them to act on them, in the most cowardly manner usually. Social networks don't make people evil, various levels of evil are already dormant deep within all of us, but the social network business wakes that serpent that should have remained asleep. And profits from it of course while washing their hands of any responsibility.
Score: 37 Votes (Like | Disagree)
ItsASpider Avatar
ItsASpider
9 months ago

people who cancel others based on their X activity.
You mean people who call out other people for liking appalling content? Pasting a "scary" word like "cancel culture" on people holding other people accountable is always such a senseless discourse... You're just doing the exact same thing as people calling everything they don't like "woke".
Score: 36 Votes (Like | Disagree)
wanha Avatar
wanha
9 months ago

people who cancel others based on their X activity.
I'll just point out that cancel culture isn't anything new... people have been cancelling each other since the dawn of time over every possible reason (being gay, suspected of being a witch, having the wrong skin color or last name, etc)

What I'm suggesting is that it isn't "them", it's "us"
Score: 30 Votes (Like | Disagree)
truthsteve Avatar
truthsteve
9 months ago
I mean cancel culture did this. No one to blame but them.
Score: 29 Votes (Like | Disagree)
David1964 Avatar
David1964
9 months ago
Hopefully this will stop the endless stream of porn bots from liking my posts.
Score: 22 Votes (Like | Disagree)
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