Elon Musk's X hides all likes to 'protect user privacy'

The Elon Musk-owned social media firm said it will make likes private to "better protect user privacy".

X, the social media platform previously known as Twitter, has started hiding what users 'like' on the platform. The move comes a day after the Elon Musk-owned company said it will make likes private to "better protect user privacy".

Following this change, people will no longer be able to see the posts that other users have liked on the platform, either through the user profile or on the post itself.

One can still see the posts they have liked and the post's original author can see who have liked it. Posts on the platform will still show like counts and other metrics to all users.

On June 12, Musk said it is "important to allow people to like posts without getting attacked for doing so!” Over the years, many public figures, including politicians and celebrities, have faced public criticism for liking objectionable content on the platform.

A few hours after the rollout, Musk claimed that the social media platform sees a "massive increase in likes after they were made private".

A screenshot of Elon Musk's post on a massive increase in likes on the platform

To be sure, this measure has been on the cards for a while. Few weeks earlier, X’s director of engineering, Haofei Wang, said public likes are "incentivising the wrong behaviour".

For instance, he said many people "feel discouraged" from liking content that might be "edgy" in fear of retaliation from trolls, or to protect their public image. He also noted that liking more posts will make the company's algorithmic 'For You' feed better.

This feature has also been available to subscribers of the firm's subscription service X Premium since September 2023.

As part of this launch, X said it is also updating its API to reflect this change. Following this update, the likes lookup functionality will only support getting the number of users who have liked a particular post and the likes for the authenticated user’s posts.

This launch comes on the heels of X tweaking its policies to formally allow "consensually produced and distributed" adult nudity or sexual content on the platform.

The company's new rules stated that users can "create, distribute, and consume material related to sexual themes as long as it is consensually produced and distributed". In March, X started allowing admins of NSFW (Not Safe For Work) adult communities to apply a “Adult Content” label in order to avoid their posts from getting automatically filtered.