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Instagram Likes – Hidden?

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/nov/15/instagram-likes-influencers-social-media

Instagram is testing the effects of hiding how many likes a photo has from everyone except for the person who posted the photo, and even they now have to dig a little bit more to view the number by clicking on the mentions of people who have liked the photo that still lies just under the photo (users will still be able to see some information about whether other accounts they follow have liked the photo already) and being brought to a page where they can see the number and scroll through all of them. The guardian writes about how this is worrying to some who use the platform of Instagram as a source of revenue, particularly Instagram influencers who rely a lot on the rich get richer concept since they are more likely to be perceived as a post worthy of a like or comment if users see that they already have quite a lot of likes and comments on the photos on their account as well as followers. The article reports that in testing, it has already been observed that the expected number of likes on photos fell with the change.

On instagram, the number of followers one has has some effect on one’s perceived popularity, but is not always extremely accurate in measuring the worth of an account since as the article notes, people can pay for more followers or be followed by bots rather than active users of Instagram with real opinions on the subject matter they interact with, distorting network effects and bringing some falsehood into people’s calculation of the value of their presence on the platform. And likes themselves are not the best indicator of popularity or value either, since bots can be responsible for them, and a like communicates the same amount of enthusiasm from everyone while different people certainly have differently scaled reactions to posts amongst themselves. These points bring about the question of whether Instagram will choose to stick with this change, revert back to their old system of likes, or introduce new ideas of how to make Instagram less of a popularity competition and more about individual appreciation of other people’s posts. That kind of shift might alter the pool of users on Instagram, making it a more personal community for people who are already close friends or acquaintances, rather than a wide one for contact between people who don’t know one another. This will occur as influencers and emerging artists and celebrities are forced to find other platforms on which to base their careers since the display of their popularity will no longer be nearly as effective.

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