What only happened? Instagram and Facebook have been experimenting with letting users hide their public like counts for years. Now, the pick is being rolled out to everyone. Information technology's hoped that the movement will ease the pressure on those people, particularly younger users, who equate social media popularity with self-worth.

Facebook first started testing how Instagram users would respond to hiding the like counts back in 2022. Covid-nineteen made the experiment less of a priority concluding year when the social media service focused more on features that supported people, but it returned in April when both FB and Insta started giving some people the selection of concealing their likes rather than removing them completely.

Facebook yesterday said that it was giving all Instagram users the choice to hide like counts on all posts in their feed, though it's still possible to see a list of everyone who liked another's mail service by clicking on "others."

"Yous can hide like counts on others' posts past visiting the new Posts department in Settings. This control applies to all the posts in your feed," the mail explains.

Users tin hide counts on their own posts and so others can't see how many likes take been received, and they tin can toggle the setting on or off even after one goes live.

The same options will be coming to Facebook in the next few weeks.

"What we heard from people and experts was that non seeing like counts was beneficial for some and abrasive to others, specially because people utilise like counts to go a sense of what's trending or popular, so we're giving y'all the choice," Facebook said.

Epitome credit: rvlsoft