X owner Elon Musk confirmed Tuesday that the social media platform formerly known as Twitter will start automatically hiding users’ likes, saying it’s “important to allow people to like posts without getting attacked for doing so!”
Musk said the change, which could take place as soon as Tuesday, will allow people to like posts ... [+]
Musk confirmed the change Tuesday afternoon in a post on X after The Verge first reported the site was “rolling out private likes as soon as today.”
Haofei Wang, director of engineering at X, said in a post on the platform on May 21 that X would be making the switch, adding: “Public likes are incentivizing the wrong behavior … many people feel discouraged from liking content that might be ‘edgy’ in fear of retaliation from trolls, or to protect their public image.”
Last August, Musk allowed paid users to hide their likes as an incentive, and all other users still had a public facing “likes” page where people could go to see all posts they had liked.
We estimate Musk to have a net worth of $205.8 billion, making him the wealthiest person in the world.