Elon Musk’s X starts hiding users' likes on the platform

To personalise a user's 'For You' feed better, Elon Musk's social media platform X unveiled a new feature that will hide what posts people like on their feed.

'Private likes' are expected to show up on feed this week. Musk said this move was so that people are allowed "to like posts without getting attacked for doing so!" Musk also said this move will increase the privacy of users.

How will this work?

• Users will still be able to see posts they have liked (but others cannot).
• Like count and other metrics for users' own posts will still show up under notifications.
• One will no longer see who liked someone else’s post.
• A post’s author can see who liked their posts.

In a post, Musk posted a graph showing higher like activity on the platform after they were made private.


Last month, Haofei Wang, X’s director of engineering, said the upcoming change is meant to protect users’ public image. "Public likes are incentivising the wrong behaviour,” he said on X.

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He meant that 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. Also a reminder that the more posts you like, the better your ‘For you’ algorithm will become,” Wang had said.