Business mogul Elon Musk has confirmed that the X platform will hide “likes” from public view to protect user privacy and protect free speech.
X is rolling out private likes as soon as today, according to a source at the company. That means what users like on the platform will be hidden by default, which is already an option for X’s Premium subscribers.
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A few weeks ago, X’s director of engineering, Haofei Wang, said the upcoming change is meant to protect users’ public image — because “many people feel discouraged” to like “edgy” content. The Likes tab on user profiles will be gone. Users will still be able to see who liked their posts and the like count for all posts, but they will not see the people who liked someone else’s post, according to X senior software engineer Enrique Barragan. (He also hinted at the launch today in a post.)
Musk confirmed the change on his own X feed, pointing out that it was “important to allow people to like posts without getting attacked for doing so.”
Important to allow people to like posts without getting attacked for doing so! https://t.co/3O1bG7wIGe
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 11, 2024
The move may help defeat cancel culture, with many conservatives losing their jobs, positions of reputations over content that they had “liked.”
Since taking over the platform in October 2022, Musk has rolled out a range of new features including ad revenue payouts for creators, subscriptions and account verificiation.
Most importantly, he has ended the previous censorship regime under former CEOs Jack Dorsey and Parag Agrawal and reinstated thousands of previously banned accounts, including that of The Gateway Pundit and President Donald Trump.
