At one point or another, we’ve all somewhat obsessed over the engagement on a photo we just posted on Instagram which we are so proud of. We’ve experience the feeling of satisfaction when we refresh the app and see that we got a ton of likes, or the getting frustrated that it’s not doing as well as we wished. This creates an unhealthy habit of using the number of likes as self validation or to rank someone’s self worth. This leads to a whole world of problems like depression, false social status, and tons of others.

Unsplash
Recently, Instagram has decided to start testing hiding likes from the platform. You can still like other people’s posts and you can still see how many likes your posts are getting. The change is that the only person who can see how many likes a post has gotten is its owner. This updated has been rolled out in countries like Canada, Australia, Italy, Japan, Brazil and more.
The intention behind this change is to take away the pressure of how many likes your post will get. This will hopefully increase the authenticity and the variety of content on instagram. With the number of likes on a post being so important to everyone, people will only post the specific content that gets high engagement. This kills creativity, freedom and uniqueness. Often times the posts that “perform the best” aren’t what we want to see. Negative news, drama, photoshopped attractive women and other similar things out perform creative, unique or positive content because it causes a reaction from everyone, which helps it get more engagement. Hiding how many likes a post gets will help relieve the pressure to post this type of content that gets the most likes. It will transition the focus from likes to the content itself.

Unsplash
It’s not good news to everyone. A lot of influencers and small businesses that rely on Instagram for their income aren’t happy. They say that it has hurt their engagement and decreased how many likes they’re getting. Influencers also think this change will hurt the way the get brand deals since likes is a determining factor of the price they charge. Potential new brands that might be interested in working with them can’t see how many likes they get anymore.
I personally disagree with these two main complaints. Although both statements are somewhat true, it’s not really hurting anyone because everyone suffers equally. It’s not just one influencer or brand seeing a decrease in engagement. Each person/brand is still in getting the same engagement relative to their competition. As to brands not being able to see the number of likes an influencer gets, it’s really not a big deal because the all influencers are still on an even playing field. Influencers can still share the number of likes with the brands since the likes are still there, simply just publicly hidden. Overall, I think it’s a fantastic change with lots of benefits and a very welcome improvement in my eyes.
Do you think this is a good change or is it a bad idea?

Likes REMOVED from Instagram?! Find out what’s happening: http://bit.ly/no-more-likes

The change that will disrupt Instagram! Find out more in our blog post. #deathofinfluncers #byebyelikes http://bit.ly/no-more-likes