Instagram, Where Are My Likes?
It’s 2 a.m. on a Monday morning, and you’re still scrolling through your Instagram. Suddenly, you realize you’re past the point of exhaustion and get up to get a glass of eggnog to help you feel better about your existence. Coming back to continue your neverending scrolling, you find your Instagram app closed down due to updates. Most updates aren’t big, so you just ignore the nonsense while logging in.
But wait.
Something is different.
Hitting like on a post, the like counter doesn’t change. In fact, you notice there is no like counter. Where on are Earth did it go? Perhaps it’s just a bug and there’ll be a fix coming. But then you get that sick feeling as if this isn’t a mistake.
You start to wonder if the likes ever mattered in the first place. Instead of looking at your likes, you focus on your engagement activity. Since no one else besides you can see the likes number, you start to reconsider the content you post. It won’t be for likes anymore surely. Perhaps you’ll try posting things that stop people in their scrolling and post a comment. But, what about yourself? You play around with the app and see that you can still leave likes, knowing full well that only you will see it.
Seeing everyone’s posts equally in your feed, you close your phone, stick it on the charger, and close your eyes. Maybe. Maybe it’s just a weird dream.
The last alarm goes off and you figure it’s time to get up. Rubbing your eyes, you open Instagram. No likes. Where did they go? Googling for a hot second, you find the source of the change:
Heads up! We’ve been testing making likes private on Instagram in a number of countries this year. We’re expanding those tests to include a small portion of people in the US next week. Looking forward to the feedback!
— Adam Mosseri (@mosseri) November 9, 2019
You doubt this is the change that will improve content. Not knowing who or what has likes can’t determine what is good content or not. Or can it? What if removing likes is the thing people need to begin interacting more on social media. It makes sense. No longer seeing the likes count, you start wondering if all the posts you scroll past are worth your milliseconds of attention. Without the likes counter, you’ll indefinitely look for another reason to follow an account.
Article after article, you sigh and realize life may be a bit different from now on. A couple articles you find give you a bit of chuckle, especially those that contain tweets like this:
Taking one last look at everyone’s Instagram likes to record their place in the social hierarchy
— Casey Newton (@CaseyNewton) November 10, 2019
Friday morning, I scroll through my Twitter feed and see a new person mucking about my timeline. I click on their profile and what do I find? It’s you, finding a new platform that still shows an account’s likes. It’s okay, change takes time to process, and before you know it, I’m sure we think back, years from now, how silly like counters were.