'Likes' no longer public on X to protect users' privacy
Jun 13, 2024
New Delhi [India], June 13 : X users will be now be able to unhesitatingly like posts on the social media platform without anyone else getting to know about it.
X made the 'likes' private starting Wednesday (US local time).
"Your Likes are now private. We are making Likes private for everyone to better protect your privacy. Liking more posts will make your "For you" feed better," one can see a popup once they log into their accounts.
Users will still be able to see posts they have liked (but others cannot), the engineering team of the X (formerly known as Twitter), had said.
Users will be able to see who liked their posts.
Like count and other metrics for one's own posts will still show up under notifications.
Elon Musk on his X timeline wrote that it was important to allow people to like posts without "getting attacked for doing so!"
Reportedly, the private likes feature already existed for X premium users.
"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," Director of Engineering at X, Haofei Wang, wrote on the platform in May.
