Instagram Testing Hiding the Like Count From Followers

In an effort to promote audiences to focus more on what users share on Instagram and not how many likes a post gets, the company is currently testing hiding a post’s like count from followers, as highlighted by Jane Manchun Wong in a recent post on Twitter.

Here’s what Instagram says about its latest experiment:

Testing a Change to How You See Likes

We want your followers to focus on what you share, not how many likes your posts get. During the test, only the person who shared a post will see the total number of likes it gets.

Below is the screenshot of what some Instagram beta testers are seeing.

Instagram is testing hiding like count from audiences,

as stated in the app: "We want your followers to focus on what you share, not how many likes your posts get" pic.twitter.com/MN7woHowVN

— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) April 18, 2019

I personally believe that a better way of implementing this would be to show the likes after someone likes. Not showing the number of likes on a post at all on any platform isn’t really the best way to do it. What do you guys think?