X Is Making Likes Private For Everyone



Thanks to X showing what its users “like” on its platform, politicians and public personalities have been caught looking at salacious and unsavory tweets in the past. Now, the platform formerly known as Twitter is making likes mostly private, and according to company chief Elon Musk, it’s an important change so that people can “like posts without getting attacked for doing so.” Engadget reported.

The company originally launched the ability to hide the likes tab as a perk for X Premium subscribers last year. “[K]eep spicy likes private,” X said when it announced the feature.

In a new tweet, X’s Engineering account has revealed that the social network is making likes private for everyone this week. Users will no longer be able to see who liked someone else’s post, which means likes on the platform will no longer cause PR crises for public figures who like sexual, hateful, and other unpalatable posts in general.

They can still see who liked their tweets, however, along with their like count and other metrics for their own posts.

NBC News reported X is now hiding what posts users like from other users. The news rolled out in a post Wednesday morning from Elon Musk as the site update was being rolled out.

“Important change: your likes are now private,” Musk said, quoting an explanation posted by the company’s engineering account on Tuesday.

According to the post, users will still be able to see which posts they have liked themselves, and who liked their own posts, but not who liked someone else’s posts.

On Wednesday, the tab on most users’ profiles showing what posts they had liked had disappeared.

According to NBC News, Haofei Wang, X’s director of engineering, had teased the update in a post on May 21.
“Public likes are incentivizing the wrong behavior,” Wang wrote. “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.”

He added that if users now more freely like posts they’re interested in, X’s algorithm will become more tailored to them.

The Verge reported X is rolling out private likes as soon as today, according to a source at the company. That means what users like on the platform will be hidden by default, which is already an option for X’s Premium subscribers. Following the publication of this story, X owner Elon Musk reshared a screenshot of it, saying it’s “important to allow people to like posts without getting attacked for doing so!”

According to The Verge, late last year, Musk told the platform’s engineers that he wanted to get rid of the tweet action buttons altogether and instead place a stronger emphasis on post views (also called “impressions”). Musk’s goal was to remove the section that contained the like and repost buttons entirely because Musk believed likes weren’t important.

In my opinion, it is possible that by removing the ability to publicly “like” someone else’s post on X might make the platform easier to navigate. That said, the platform itself is going to still know what you chose to “like”.