Recently, rumors have emerged that the social media platform X will have a private like feature. This means that what users like on the platform will be hidden by default. This report was confirmed directly by the CEO of the platform, Elon Musk, he shared a post confirming that the report was true by saying
“Important to allow people to like posts without getting attacked for doing so!”
Last May, X’s technical director Haofei Wang said this change was made to help site users “protect their public image”, this decision certainly got pros and cons from loyal users.
“Yeah, we are making likes private.
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. Also, a reminder that the more posts you like, the better your For you algorithm will become.” said Haofei Wang.
According to reports on this problem, users will still be able to see who liked their posts and the total number of likes for all posts, even though the like tab on user profiles would vanish from the website.
At the moment, members of X can conceal their likes from their public profiles by subscribing to the website’s premium subscription service, which requires a monthly minimum payment of £3.20.
According to studies, hate speech and related content on X—the original name of Twitter—rose in popularity after Musk acquired the company in October 2022. Is this among the possible causes?
