Elon Musk’s company, X, is planning to make social network “likes” private. This could make it hard for users to tell the difference between something they’ve saved and something they’ve favorited. New posts from employees of the company say that the decision to hide likes is meant to protect their public image and encourage people to interact with the site by letting them like “edgy” material.
It is not clear that this is the best way for X to solve the problems it wants to fix, like giving its algorithm more information so it can better tailor your material to your interests.
Some Details About The Private Likes Change:
- You can see who liked your posts
- You can see how many people liked all of your posts, comments, etc.
- You can’t see who liked someone else’s post
- You can’t see the “Liked” tab on someone else’s profile
It seems like the change wasn’t really needed since X, the company that used to be Twitter, already had a private way to save posts on the site: favorites. X’s bookmarks were made to save posts or threads that you might want to read again or later. They were also a more private way to interact with other people than the “like” button.
Users will be able to see who liked their posts and how many people liked all of their posts and comments, which makes things even more messy. So, a private “like” isn’t really privateāthe poster knows about it, and they could possibly show off someone’s likes if they wanted to. If X wants to encourage “edgy” behavior, like liking posts with adult content or very strong political views, people might still be afraid to “like” that content because the system isn’t completely private.
People who don’t want to risk being seen may continue to save liked posts in X’s tabs or even from outside link-saving tools.
After reading posts from X employees, users will no longer be able to see other people’s likes on their posts or use a tab on their page to look through their likes. This might stop people from spying on others, but it also takes away a useful tool for finding things.
For example, if you’re new to X, you might look at what other people you follow like to get ideas for who else they might find interesting and fun. You could also look at someone’s likes to get an idea of the kinds of things they like when you’re looking at their page to see if you want to follow them.
I look at the “Likes” tab of people I respect to find great information that I might not have seen any other way. It might be best to have the choice to turn off likes.
Really, the issue with likes is that adding them changed the purpose of a tool that was originally used for bookmarking. The feature was more of a “favorite” than a sign of support before it was changed from a star to a heart, which was the trend at the time. From a theoretical point of view, users could favorite anything, since doing so didn’t mean they liked or agreed with the material.
Instead, it could have been something they were just writing down, like a politician’s statement you strongly disagreed with but wanted to remember; a post that needed more research; posts you were saving to later add to a Moments (RIP) collection; a billionaire’s most upsetting or silly posts, and more. Since you weren’t hitting a heart icon, it would be hard for someone to say that you “liked” the content. This would give you a good defense.
People were furious when Twitter switched from stars to hearts. They knew that hearts meant something completely different, which changed how they used the social network.
That time, TechCrunch said, “the ‘Like’ is limited in what it allows a user to express.” But the “Favorite” button could mean many things, such as “thank you, a handshake, a tip of the hat, or even a Robert De Niro stare down.” TechCrunch said at the time that switching from stars to hearts wouldn’t solve Twitter’s bigger problems of getting more people to use it and interact with it, and it mostly didn’t. After each quarter of flat growth, the company had to find a way out.
Because people didn’t like the change, Twitter later added Bookmarks to give people a way to save things secretly again. This included posts that you didn’t agree with but wanted to come back to later.
Now that X is changing the “like” function again, many users are letting the company know how disappointed they are. Many ideas have been put forward as alternatives to this suggested change on X. For example, the likes could be made private by default, or users could long-press the heart icon to leave an anonymous “like.” Others said that making likes private could lead to manipulation because content makers could use armies of bots to boost their posts and make money.
Another option has been mentioned by Jack Dorsey, who used to be the CEO of Twitter. When he talks about likes vs. stars, Dorsey is right on the mark. We don’t agree with a lot of what he says these days, like that Nostr is the future of social or that Bluesky is some kind of control platform.
In a post on X, Dorsey wrote: “‘like’/ā¤ļø used to be a āŗļø.” We should not have changed our minds about that.
His post has more than 700 likes, and many people have replied that they agree with what he said.
If X’s goal isn’t to make user interaction functions more private but to get more data for its algorithm, then it doesn’t need to hide likes. It would be much less dramatic to change the icon from the heart to something else, like a star. This would still achieve the same result.
Also Read: X Starts Stories, Which Give News Summed Up by Grok Ai
Public likes are encouraging people to do bad things. For instance, a lot of people don’t like “edgy” material because they’re afraid of getting trolled or because they want to protect their public image.
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