Elon Musk says X users liking more posts after likes were made private

New Delhi,UPDATED: Jun 13, 2024 09:19 IST

After a day of declaring private likes on X, Elon Musk shared a graph indicating that the move was a success. On Wednesday, June 12, 2024, Musk made it official via his post. X, the social media platform, rolled out a feature called ‘private likes’, which aims to change how users interact with posts.

As the feature spends just one day in action, Musk found that the feature is helping the cause. The reason for likes to go private on the platform is that the users’ likes were encouraging wrong and unusual behaviour, as stated by an X representative. The feature aims to let the user like whatever they actually like without worrying about who might see it.

Elon Musk shared details of an increased ‘like’ rate

The graph, posted by Musk, indicates how this feature serves its aim. According to the graph, after rolling out the new feature, users liked more posts on X. The social media platform observed a hike in the rate of likes. The exponential increase peaked at around 6PM GMT. While the graph also displays a dip in the next hour, Musk sounds satisfied with the move.

Earlier, Musk made private likes as an optional feature, but now it is in the default setting. The netizens have mixed reactions to making the option a mandate. While one user commented that people are actually engaging with multiple posts now, another user is of the opinion that the feature should have been an option only.

How does Private Likes work?

There are several speculations on how this feature will work. Will it hide the number of likes on the post, or will it affect the number of likes you have? Clearing up the confusion, X employees explained that this will not affect the likes of one’s post. The users will still be able to see who likes their posts and also the count of posts, replies and other features. The main aim of this change is to hide the profiles of people who liked someone else’s post.

In short, to understand this feature, users should know four things in their mind. The users will still be able to see posts they have liked, but others cannot. Like count and other metrics for your own posts will still show up under notifications. A post author can still see who liked their posts. But a user can no longer see who liked someone else’s post. Majorly, the Liked tab on the profile will be gone.