X, formerly Twitter, has launched a private-like feature that hides likes on a post from other users except for the post’s originator on the platform.
“Important change: your likes are now private,” said Elon Musk, owner of X, on Wednesday. According to the firm, users will still be able to see which posts they liked and who liked their posts, but not those who liked someone else’s posts.
“You will still be able to see posts you have liked (but others cannot),” said X’s Engineering team.
This update follows a flurry of policy updates Musk has introduced to the platform since taking over in 2022.
“We are making likes private for everyone to better protect your privacy. Liking more posts will make your for you feed better,” X said emphasised.
Haofei Wang, X’s Director of Engineering, first spoke about the update in a post in May. “Public likes are incentivising the wrong behaviour,” 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 it without worrying who might see it.”
While it is being floated as a new feature, the private likes feature has been available to X premium users. In August 2023, Musk introduced the option for paid users to hide their likes as an added benefit, while non-premium users continued to have a public-facing “likes” page displaying all their liked posts.
