Instagram continues to advance with its idea to hide the "likes" or "likes" of your platform. What began as an experiment in Canada has been expanding to other other countries, the last one to arrive will be the United States this week that begins. And yes, it will continue to generate controversy but it is a good idea.
Goodbye to the visibility of the "likes"
In a recent interview, the current CEO of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, confirmed that the social network will hide the "likes" in the United States next week. This is nothing new, in May of this year the platform started doing this as an experiment in Canada. Little by little it was expanding to other countries and it must be said that during that first phase of tests the comments were not very favorable. The greatest criticism came especially from the influencers.
WATCH: Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri announces that the platform will start hiding likes for US audiences starting next week. It's the latest step in Instagram's quest to become the safest place on the internet. https://t.co/BGkMG57rdk #WIRED25 pic.twitter.com/WNTyAPVhaD
- WIRED (@WIRED) November 9, 2019
Despite that, Instagram continued and continues to be convinced that it is the right thing to do to make the platform a safer and better place. Is a "like" really dangerous? The answer is that it shouldn't, but the reality is that it should.
As much as some refuse, as much as it really is a self esteem problem that it would be necessary to work on a personal level, the "likes" have become a business and a controversial and negative aspect more than positive.
The damage that people with low morale and who do not find the same support in networks as other of their colleagues or friends can suffer is dangerous. It has already been seen in some studies and you may have suffered or seen someone affected by it yourself. And it doesn't matter, you don't have to be a celebrity or influencer. Thus, eliminating them is an interesting measure that removes stress.
Another thing is, as I said, the influencers. These are mostly upset because they lose a parameter that allowed them to sell their influence and personal brand to brands. Let's see, they can continue to do this but they will have to move to a proactive state. Because they, like any other user, will be able to continue checking how many likes their posts have.
When they remove the visible likes from the instagram posts, there will be no shortage of frustrated “influencers” uploading the screenshot of their own likes in the stories
—emily marie ✧ *. ☆☽ (@injusticenemy) November 9, 2019
The problem for them is that the visibility they were given so that brands would feel attracted and contact them will no longer be there. But here you could also get into another debate about whether a "like" is really an indicator of something or whether you have to look at other types of engagement such as comments or times you see content shared through other users.
In any case, I bet on this measure of hiding the likes on most networks and on Instagram in particular. This it will make the vast majority refocus on what made it important: photography. Sharing content thinking only of contributing, and not of making a profit, is the best thing that could happen to Instagram again.
So, although at the moment this measure will only apply to some users in the United States, hopefully at some point it will be something that arrives globally and for all profiles of the network. What do you think?
The fewer elements the better, and if they gave you the option to delete them all, the better, because that way we could use more of the screenshot to obtain new wallpapers, as some do for get wallpapers from stories of Instagram.