That’s right, Instagram intends to hide from a small part of its users in the United States, the amount of ‘Likes’ received by the content published from this November. After carrying out this type of tests in other countries, the objective of this strategy is to reduce social pressure on the network.
That’s according to Adam Mosseri, director of the Facebook-owned mobile platform, which is focused on photo and video sharing, who tweeted a few days ago:
“We have tested the ability to make ‘Likes’ private in several countries. We will be rolling out these tests to a small portion of people in the United States, and we can’t wait to see the feedback.”
What is the reason for the new Instagram update?
Instagram, one of the most popular social networks among young people, had already started hiding ‘Likes’ last May in Canada, and in July in six other countries including: Australia, Ireland, Italy, Brazil, Brazil, Japan and New Zealand.
The idea, then, is to be able to reduce stress in its users after the criticism received about the application’s risks to mental health.
Therefore, as of today, the sample of U.S. users will no longer be able to view the number of ‘Likes’ received by the publications of others. But, you will still be able to see the number of ‘Likes’ on your own posts, however, to do so you will have to log in to a different page.
During previous tests, the Facebook-owned social network had claimed that the measurement tools of companies using the platform to promote their products were not affected.
For its part, last July a spokesperson for Instagram, a platform with more than one billion users, commented:
“We’re doing this experiment because we want our users to focus on photos and videos shared, not how many ‘Likes’ they collect.”
He further added:
“We don’t want Instagram to be competition.”
Finally, you should know that a 2018 U.S. study conducted by the Pew Research Centershowed that 72% of teenagers in this country were using Instagram. In addition, almost 40% of them at some point felt compelled to share only content that had obtained many ‘likes’ or comments.
In addition, Facebook is also planning to implement the same strategy: stop showing the number of ‘Likes’ received by the content.
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