Instagram is Getting Rid of ‘Likes’: What it Means for Users and Businesses

Instagram is Getting Rid of ‘Likes’ in its Latest Update

Instagram has been one of the most popular websites in the world and it is making a major change to the platform in an attempt to reform the social media platform. They will be hiding the display of the number of ‘likes’ that a particular post gets in an attempt to ‘remove pressure’ on users particularly children.

Slow Roll Out

The changes have been rolling out for selected users in the UK following the changes being rolled out across the US. Instagram said ‘You’ll no longer see the total number of likes and views on photos and videos posted to Feed unless they’re your own.’ The idea behind this change is to try and ‘depressurise’ the platform, particularly for kids. It is felt the constant chase to get likes on certain photos and posts puts a lot of pressure on people and can lead to anti-social behaviour such as bullying on the platform. The change has been tested across several different countries already such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Ireland, Italy and Brazil.

Healthier Posting

The company is hoping the changes will mean that there is a lot less competition for approval and that in turn this will mean the reduction of click-baity posts. This should lead to much healthier and happier users all around. Instagram exec Adam Mosseri spoke about the changes with Wired Magazine ‘It’s about young people, the idea is to try and de-pressurise Instagram, make it less of a competition, give people more space to focus on connections with people that they love, things that inspire them. We have to see how it affects how people feel about the platform, how it affects how they use the platform.’

Changing Influencers

Users will still be able to see the amount of likes they receive on their own posts. Response to the changes has been mixed from Influencers though most tend to think the change is a positive one. The quest for ‘likes’ can mean that influencers aren’t always able to post the things that they want to. Instead needing to only make posts that will get high like counts. The performance of particular posts can cause the fortunes of influencers to rise and fall without telling the whole story behind a particular post. This will allow influencers to use more pertinent metrics to determine the success of their posts these are things such as the number of people who save a photo, reach and impressions. None of these metrics is shared with members of the public so there isn’t the pressure to inflate numbers.

Conclusion

The whole push for these changes are to improve the mental health of users of social media and ultimately this has to be a good thing. The changes should lead to more instances of genuine sharing rather than marketing campaigns just to get likes. It should also stop users feeling compelled to post things they don’t want to just to see their public numbers increase. 

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