Oh Elon. Another day, another rushed change to Twitt- erm, X, this time banishing likes into the ether.
Rolling out from today, users will be unable to see who has liked a post other than themselves – unless it’s their post.
Say farewell to judging others’ political and personal tastes from afar, or even a little pre-date prep by scoping out a potential partners’ likes, literally.
Why Elon Musk made this move has left many debating the official and unofficial motives behind it – not unlike the other sweeping changes implemented since he dropped a cool $44 billion to buy the platform back in October 2022.
It feels like much longer to be honest.
As is often the way, Mr Musk took to X to confirm the change in a very un-corporate manner, writing above a screenshot of the news: ‘Important to allow people to like posts without getting attacked for doing so!’
While it may seem odd that the self-proclaimed king of free speech should advocate for people expressing their views in such a furtive manner, it is not wrong to say there have been consequences for those who like particular posts.
Ted Cruz is still known as the guy who liked a pornographic tweet on the anniversary of 9/11, even if he did throw an aide under the bus trying to deflect.
However, Olivia DeRamus, founder of Communia, the social network for women, argues that simply hiding people’s opinions isn’t the way forward.
‘It could make people bolder in supporting controversial at best or offensive or hate-lead content at worst,’ she says. ‘I don’t think it’s going to increase meaningful conversations or engagement in the ways that truly matter to a sustainable social media platform.’
Notifying users of the change, X also notes that ‘liking more posts will make your “For You” feed better’.
Most would probably agree it couldn’t get much worse, and may welcome the change.
Social media consultant Paul Sutton can see the benefit to this.
‘Liking more posts will make For You better, so that makes sense,’ he says. ‘And I agree that if you can like posts without other people seeing, you might feel less exposed or vulnerable.
‘X has become a place with a lot of trolling, and this will reduce the potential for that.
‘But it all seems like a PR line.’
Paul is not alone. While the official take sounds magnanimous, many suspect Mr Musk’s motivations are more personal.
For starters, there’s the bot problem.
When he walked into the offices of then Twitter carrying an actual sink, he also brought with him a pledge to rid the platform of bots. It hasn’t gone well.
But by hiding who’s liking what, it will be less obvious to the casual observer that the platform is still riddled.
‘Engagement has dropped at X, and that’s majorly down to the bot problem,’ says Paul. ‘There’s so much bot rubbish, porn, all that horrible stuff, [so lots of people] are coming off the platform because of that.
‘And bots have destroyed the For You feed.’
However, hiding likes won’t solve the bot issue.
‘Hiding bot activity will make it harder for people to hold Elon and X accountable, but it won’t feel like a better platform to use for the average user,’ says Olivia.
Social media and digital marketing expert Will Francis agrees.
‘Social media platforms have quite sophisticated ways of clearing out accounts that are clearly bots or spam,’ he says.
‘[Removing likes] isn’t the most obvious way of dealing with it.
‘However, the reason [platforms] don’t choose not to [clear out accounts] is because as soon as they do, there’s an immediate drop in engagement – and some people will leave.’
Will says he was an early adopter of X, then Twitter.
‘I loved Twitter,’ he says. ‘It was simple, open and transparent. You followed someone, they followed you back, you saw their tweets.’
Of course, as of a few days ago, what people tweet – now post – could include some rather X-rated content, with a policy update allowing users to ‘create, distribute, and consume material related to sexual themes’.
Hiding likes will also encourage engagement with more, pardon the pun, X-rated content – including, potentially, prominent figures. Only the poster could then potentially out them – and doing so would not only be a story, but also turbocharge their own engagement.
Yet another moral maze.
At that deepest level, hiding likes raises a number of ethical issues. Much could be debated.
But on a practical level, really, this just makes X even worse.
What next?
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