Instagram Is Hiding Likes from Users' Posts

After it was launched in 2010, Instagram has gained great popularity, attracting over 1 billion users by the end of 2019. However, recently, some users report that Instagram is hiding likes in others' posts. In response, Instagram and Mark Zuckerberg admitted the fact and gave the reason. Below this blog will explain the reason why Instagram cancels this function and demonstrate the influence including advantages and disadvantages that it brings to people's lives. Now let's move further!

On April 30, 2019, Instagram announced that it would start to run test in Canada that week, hiding the total number of likes on photos and videos that others post. Since then, users can't see likes from others on the main feed which originally show below the post. Besides, users can't view counts on videos while they are browsing another user's profile. 

The test receives a large range of reactions, from anger to relief. Indeed, usually noticing whether others like your posts or whether others have more likes than you can bring invisible pressure and anxiety that you won't be easily conscious of. Consequently, it is a wise decision that Instagram makes as it brings many benefits to users.

In the process of using Instagram to share photos, there will be a magical transition on people's attitude. At first, they are happy that they can upload what they regard interesting, discuss with their friends, and gain resonation with their friends which promotes friendship. Gradually, they start to care about how many likes they receive because they think more likes represents that they are more popular among their friends. People even begin to compare themselves with others to obtain self-esteem. As a result, removing the number of likes can relieve your fear of not receiving likes or receiving less like than others. 

Being affected by counts, people are easily misled if they consider that more counts mean better content. No! There are services that users can buy likes or comments. A lot of likes may conceal a fact that these likes are fake. The true beauty requires us to observe carefully and patiently instead of determining simply by its external packaging.
 
For people who post a message, they will value more on the quality of the content if they want to improve the flow of their posts. Consequently, not showing the number of likes may make the networking environment more equal, allow people to comfortably express their opinions, and concentrate more on the post's content.
 

In the society, many social media platforms determine whether the content is worth distributing to others and how to distribute by calculating how many likes a post receives. Therefore, many people, especially the cyber celebrities, would like to collect likes as possible and compete in order to enhance the rate of exposure and attract followers. Based on this, the fact that Instagram hides likes will prevent the phenomenon of collecting likes on purpose to some extent.

However, if we think more rationally, canceling the function of showing the number of likes will also bring disadvantages, especially for business.

Unlike what likes mean to individuals, likes describe the extent of how deeply a company's competitor's posts will influence the business. Sometimes, likes can serve as a standard or an indicator which can help a company compare and analyze the power of other companies' posts. If your posts gain less likes than your competitors', it means that you need to make more efforts to improve brand reputation such as updating more content or outputting content with different topics. So, hiding likes may cause a company to spend more time and energy to do marketing research.

Another disadvantage is that Instagram not showing likes may decrease the rate of user engagement. As a way to stimulate social interaction, likes are able to generate people's interests to communicate and comment because if people see that many people like a post, they will probably like that post also. Such effect that delivers among individuals can largely contribute to the flow and the user engagement. For business, they may lose some opportunities to collect their customers' feedback. Thus, Instagram not showing likes is reducing the rate of user engagement.

Like a double-edged sword, Instagram hiding likes has its own advantages and disadvantages that can make different impacts to individual people and businesses. However, totally speaking, the benefits weigh more than the disadvantages because the environment is more comfortable, and the content is more valuable. Focus on the high-quality content and enjoy a better social networking platform!