Elon Musk-owned social network, X (formerly Twitter), is hiding likes making them private by default a feature that was already available for the platform’s premium subscribers.
Last month, X’s Director of Engineering, Haofei Wang shared that the social platform was working on making likes private saying “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,” Wang added.
While the “likes” tab will be gone from user profiles, a user will still be able to see who has liked their posts under notifications but won’t be able to see those who liked somebody else’s posts.
“Like count and other metrics for your posts will still show up under notifications.” X’s engineering account (@XEng) posted saying that this update is meant to better protect everyone’s privacy.
“This week we’re making Likes private for everyone to better protect your privacy.” the account revealed to which X CEO Elon Musk quoted and confirmed, “Important change: your likes are now private”
Musk on Tuesday had responded to The Verge’s post about hiding likes saying it is “important to allow people to like posts without getting attacked for doing so!”
This is the second update this month and comes after the microblogging website recently announced a policy change that allows users to post adult content, “Porn” on the platform as long as it is “labeled and not prominently displayed” as per the social platform’s “adult content policy” page.
“We believe that users should be able to create, distribute, and consume material related to sexual themes as long as it is consensually produced and distributed. Sexual expression, visual or written, can be a legitimate form of artistic expression,” reads X’s “adult content” policies.
However, while the site is allowing adults to engage with and create sexual content, X said it is balancing “this freedom” by limiting exposure of such content for children and adult users who wish not to see it.
