Although it was already known that it had been in testing for some time, we are possibly facing what would become a kind of ‘mini-revolution’ in the field of social networks, and, more particularly, in two of the most popular: Facebook and Instagram .
And it is that, in a very short time, users of these social platforms will have the possibility of deactivating the traditional “like” counter in their own messages , as well as in the public accounts of other users.
For now, it is an optional change, which would basically consist of a new added function that users who wish to can activate it or not. This means that, for now at least, all users continue to be “free” to do what they want and therefore to show the popularity of their posts, or to keep an eye on the counters of the people who follow them. .
However, as far as Instagram is concerned, it seems that, for Facebook, it would be an end to what many experts have already called “the dictatorship of ‘like'” .
In the explanations that the company has given to take this step, the social network evokes the psychological pressure that, in reality, the “like” counter tends to exert. Users can be overly influenced by a certain post with lots of likes, or even annoyed when their own posts don’t attract enough.
At the moment it will only be available on Instagram
If you want to do some tests and prefer to choose to deactivate this very traditional and typical function of social networks, you should know that on Instagram it is already available , being possible to stop showing the counter in all the content that appears in our feed, only in messages posted by people we follow, or even in our posts.
Now, in the settings (or configuration) of the Instagram application we will find the Publications option, within Privacy , in which section we will find the new Likes and Views option, where the system now allows us to ‘Hide likes counts and reproductions’. Curiously, this option will be marked at first, so we must deactivate it if we wish.
However, these options will also soon reach Facebook . What’s more, the social network itself states that it will be possible to modify the configuration afterwards . This means that we could first leave the “like” counter below a message, and then delete it. Or vice versa.
It is true that it is a curious measure that has caught the attention of many, especially if we take into account the importance that “likes” have in a social network like Facebook, one of the elements in which most of users are used to reviewing before doing the same. In any case, it is interesting to pay attention to how it works, and whether or not users give it the expected result.
