Musk Wants To Make Likes Private On Twitter

According to the micro-blogging service X/Twitter, which is now run by Elon Musk, “likes” are not for the public. The platform’s head of development has now announced that “Likes” will only be visible privately in the future.

‘Likes’ are a central element of social media

What has been standard on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and pretty much every other social media platform for decades will soon be a thing of the past, at least on X/Twitter: publicly visible “likes” on users’ posts. Instead, the “likes” should only be visible to the authors of the posts – and to the users who distributed them.

After various speculations about such a step, Wang Haofei, one of the developers of X/Twitter, confirmed the measure on his personal profile. As Director of Engineering, Wang has been responsible for development at “X” since mid-2023, which was formerly known as Twitter before it was taken over by Tesla boss Elon Musk for tens of billions of dollars.

Public ‘likes’ reward ‘wrong behavior’

Wang also provided a reason for the decision to no longer display public likes on Twitter in the future. Public “likes” would “reward the wrong behavior,” he explained. For example, many people would be discouraged from “liking” content that might be “edgy” in order to “avoid backlash from trolls or protect their public image.”

We will therefore ensure that users will soon be able to give “likes” without having to worry about who might see it. Depending on which posts users “like”, the “For You” algorithm will also improve. The feedback is – unsurprisingly – extremely mixed.

Many observers see the move as a measure with which ultra-conservative, ultra-right could simply further promote opinions on X/Twitter that are illegal under the laws of many countries. This means that the public no longer acts as a supervisory authority when it comes to potentially questionable content. At the same time, it will be less easy for users to see which topics are particularly popular or which content is of high quality.

Under Elon Musk’s leadership, X/Twitter made a number of other controversial changes in addition to rebranding itself as “X,” including the decision to make “blue tick” verification available to everyone on a monthly subscription. For some observers, therefore, the removal of public “likes” is just another step in changing X/Twitter in a negative way and ultimately destroying it.

In fact, the idea of ​​no longer displaying “likes” publicly is not necessarily new. Because the author of a post or tweet will still be shown when a post receives more or fewer “likes,” he can still easily see which posts are popular. At the same time, users can still express their opinions on certain posts through the “likes.”