It was supposed to be the end of Influencer culture when, back in May, Instagram removed public visibility of ‘likes’ so that “followers focus on the photos and videos shared, not how many likes they get.”
This week, app researcher Jane Manchun Wong spotted code in Facebook’s Android app that hid the exact number of likes from everyone except the original poster:
As with Instagram likes, the poster can still see a full list of how many people have liked the post but users will only see that the post has been liked by “[a friend] and others”.
Following Manchun Wong’s discovery, Facebook confirmed to TechCrunch that they are considering removing ‘like’ counts. The company, however, has not made public any timeline for potential changes to Facebook’s ‘like’ functionality.
Facebook, which owns Instagram, declined to release any information regarding the results of removing Instagram ‘likes’ in test markets.
Manchun Wong was also the person who broke the news about Instagram removing likes a full 12 days before Instagram made the official announcement.
Currently, Instagram is testing the like-less feature in seven countries including Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Japan, Italy and Ireland.
Manchun Wong has blogged about how the merge of the feature over to Facebook indicates that it is not having negative effects on advertisers or influencers as once predicted.
