Elon Musk after X hides likes from posts: "Massive increase in.."

Elon Musk-owned social media platform X recently said that users' likes will now be hidden by default, and a day after the announcement, the billionaire claimed that this change has led to a significant increase in likes for many users globally.
In a fresh post on X, he said that there has been a “massive increase in likes after they were made private.”

"Important to allow people to like posts without getting attacked for doing so!" he said in another post on X.


The social media platform said that it is making likes private for everyone "to better protect your privacy." This means that users' likes on the platform will be hidden by default and they “will be able to like content without worrying about who might see it”.
Various reports said that “Private likes” have started to show up on users’ timelines but some members of The Times of India tech team .
It is to be noted that users will still be able to see posts they have liked (but others cannot). Additionally, like count and other metrics for users' own posts will still show up under notifications. Users will no longer see who liked someone else’s post, a post’s author can see who liked its posts.
“The author will be notified, but not anyone else. Bookmark is only visible to you. We could even make it customisable for users,” according to the company.
Last month, Haofei Wang, X’s director of engineering, said the upcoming change is meant to protect users’ public image.
“Yeah, we are making likes private. Public likes are incentivising the wrong behaviour,” he said in a post.
People might hesitate to like “edgy” content due to concerns about negative reactions from trolls or damage to their online reputation.
“Soon you’ll be able to like without worrying who might see it,” Wang said.