X To Remove Public Likes From The Platform

Public likes from the social media app X, formerly Twitter, are about to undergo a major change. The company’s owner Elon Musk has decided to hide this feature from your profile, and soon, the Likes tab on X will also be removed from your account, the media has reported. Rumours about the removal of the Likes tab emerged following a recent report, and now X engineers have confirmed the development.

Likes have been an old feature on Twitter, as well as on other social media platforms like Meta-owned Instagram and Facebook.

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Why is X removing the feature and the Likes tab from profiles? According to Haofei Wang, an X engineer: “Public likes are incentivising the wrong behaviour. Many users feel discouraged from liking ‘edgy’ content for fear of retaliation from trolls or to protect their public image.”

Additionally, while X Premium users have had the option to hide their likes, the platform now plans to remove this feature entirely. One of the biggest critics of these changes is former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who questioned the purpose of this change and how it differs from a bookmark.

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Earlier this week, MacRumors researcher Aaron Perris shared a post about a new flag he found in the X app for iOS. When activated, this flag completely disables the likes tab on every X user’s public profile.

X’s Director of Engineering Wang said: “A like is visible to both you and the author, who will be notified, but not to anyone else. A bookmark, on the other hand, is only visible to you.”

Meanwhile, Musk-owned X started introducing an array of exciting new AI-powered features to enhance user experience earlier this month. An official announcement from the X engineering team, shared via their X handle @XEng, revealed that X Premium subscribers will now benefit from a comprehensive summary of posts associated with each trending story on X.

These curated stories will be conveniently accessible under the ‘For You’ tab within the ‘Explore’ section of the platform.