Owner of SpaceX and Starlink, Elon Musk plans to eliminate likes from X’s post and like tab from users’ profile somewhere this week.
Even though musk hasn’t hinted announced exact date, but drastic changes will take place for X users this week.
Hinting about the change, Elon taking to X, commented, ‘Important to allow people to like posts without getting attacked for doing so!’
Important to allow people to like posts without getting attacked for doing so! https://t.co/3O1bG7wIGe
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 11, 2024
Meanwhile, the official engineering twitter handle has revealed the details about this new update, which might become visible in coming days.
As per the profile, likes will now become private. Meaning, only you can see the liked posts but other users cannot.
But at the same time, you won’t be able to see likes on somebody else posts and in contrast, the post author will be able to see its likes.
Overall, Twitter isn’t completely removing the likes from platform, it is now making it confidential.
However, you can still see the posts which others have liked. But in your feed, the likes on posts will not be reflected. Also, the counts and other metrics regarding your posts will still be seen
Even though, this personalized like can potentially enhance the privacy of users, but many netizens can potentially express their concerns over Musk’s decision.
Why Likes Are Being Removed?
But, X’s engineer Haofei Wang, has explained the rationale behind this decision, wang said, ‘Public likes are incentivizing the wrong behavior. 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’.
Besides, many users have also expressed their agreement with this decision, as many believed, that likes can now be used for bookmarking the content for future consumption.
Discussing the bookmark, Wang elucidated how this new feature is different from the traditional concept of a bookmark, and he stated, ‘Like is visible between you and the author, the author will be notified, but not anyone else. Bookmark is only visible to you.’
