Instagram has been testing an option that would allow users to hide like counts on their posts. In early March, a bug caused private like counts to launch to a number of users, prompting the company to offer some background.
“The idea started well over a year ago now and it was to make like counts private,” explained Instagram exec Adam Mosseri in a video tweet. The project, which aims to depressurize the experience on Instagram, was put on hold due to the pandemic, growing racial tensions and the spread of misinformation.
“We’ve picked it back up and we’re trying to figure things out. Clearly it’s a very polarizing idea,” he said. It’s possible that users will be given the option to hide like counts on a post-by-post basis. Mosseri expects official updates to take place in the next couple of months.
We've been testing a new experience to hide likes on Feed posts. We unintentionally added more people to the test today, which was a bug — we’re fixing this issue and restoring like counts to those people as soon as possible.
— Instagram Comms (@InstagramComms) March 3, 2021