X (formerly Twitter), will launch its ‘private likes’ feature as soon as this week to protect user privacy. This already was an option for X’s Premium subscribers.
This means that others, except for a post’s author, won’t know it if you’ve liked a post.
A few weeks ago, X’s director of engineering, Haofei Wang, said the upcoming change is meant to protect users’ public image because “many people feel discouraged” to like “edgy” content, The Verge reported.
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Following Verge’s story on the same, X’s owner Elon Musk confirmed it by resharing a screenshot on X on the matter, saying it’s “important to allow people to like posts without getting attacked for doing so!”
Musk made a number of changes to X since he bought it in October 2022 for $44 billion. He removed, then eventually reinstated headlines from news articles posted on the platform to get journalists to post directly on X, changed the name from Twitter to X, removed the ability to block other users, and introduced a premium plan that allows users to pay for more customization options, among other changes, according to a Forbes report.
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After Musk bought the platform, he had issues with advertisers leaving in bulk, greatly reducing revenue, due to concerns of brand safety issues, confusing policies, and broken technology,” according to Insider Intelligence.
Late last year, Musk told the platform’s engineers that he wanted to get rid of the like and repost buttons altogether and instead, place a stronger emphasis on post views (also called “impressions”). because Musk believed likes weren’t important, a source told The Verge.
“Social media in general is shifting away from like counts, so this makes sense,” the source said. “Part of me thinks [Musk] just wants to disassociate from Twitter more and more.”
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