Elon Musk on Wednesday confirmed the roll out of a new feature that will hide all likes by default for X users.
X is rolling out “private likes” which will likely show up on users’ timelines from Wednesday.
This means that users’ likes on the platform will be hidden by default and they “will be able to like content without worrying about who might see it”.
Musk said that it is “important to allow people to like posts without getting attacked for doing so”.
Last month, Haofei Wang, X’s director of engineering, had said the upcoming change is meant to protect users’ public image.
“Yeah, we are making likes private. Public likes are incentivising the wrong behaviour,” he had posted on X.
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.
“Soon you’ll be able to like without worrying who might see it. Also a reminder that the more posts you like, the better your ‘For you’ algorithm will become,” Wang had said.
According to the social media platform, like is visible between you and the author.
“The author will be notified, but not anyone else. Bookmark is only visible to you. We could even make it customisable for users,” according to Wang.