Instagram removed the likes entirely on Instagram posts in a trial a few years ago in several countries for select users. Now they’re making it optional.
According to Adam Mosseri, CEO of Instagram, this was an initiative to make Instagram “a safer place on the internet.” Not everyone was happy about their likes going away, some still wanted to see counts in order to track what’s popular,” Mosseri shared on Twitter. This mostly affected Creators and Influencers as you can imagine.
Now, they’re testing a new option to let users choose whether they see their likes or not. This test will include the ability to hide likes on other user’s posts, disable likes on their own posts or choose to keep the original experience.
What they are hoping is that these options will have users feeling less pressure when posting.
If you happen to be selected for the test you can go to a post, click on the three dots and you’ll see the option to hide likes. There is no way to opt-in to the Instagram test group. Instagram said it will likely be available to the same countries the previous removal of likes test was done in.
