Instagram and the Information Cascade
https://www.cnet.com/news/instagram-is-hiding-likes-you-may-be-happier-in-the-end/
This article explains that Instagram, a popular social media site, will be getting rid of the like counts on people’s posts. The article explains that the site is doing this as a way to improve its users mental health. Many people fixate on how many likes they get, and why they aren’t getting as many as other people. There are even apps that people can use to increase the number of likes on their photos. Instagram is testing to see if getting rid of seeing how many likes other people get will increase its user’s mental health.
However, this can also be thought of in terms of a following the crowd information cascade. For example, say that you could see how many likes a post has. If the post already has a lot of likes, I am more likely to like that post too. However, if a picture has been up for some time and barely has any likes, I am less likely to like that post. Furthermore, the power of social media “influencers” and “ambassadors” comes from how many likes they get on their posts. The more popular an influencer is, the more likes they get, and when people see that the influencer has a lot of likes they get even more famous, and then people are in turn more likely to like their posts. So, it will be interesting to see what happens to the power in the social network after likes are removed, and there is almost no way of following the crowd.
– ark243