Elon Musk‘s social media platform, X, has introduced a feature that hides users’ likes, previously available only to paying subscribers.
This update aims to enhance user privacy, according to an announcement by X’s engineering team earlier this week.
The change, which took effect on Wednesday, means that while users can still see their own likes, others cannot.
The “Likes” tab is now only visible on users’ own profiles and has been removed from other accounts’ profiles.
Users also received a notification suggesting that liking more posts would improve their “For you” feed.
Despite the hidden likes, like counts and other metrics will still be visible under notifications for a user’s posts. While posts will still show the number of likes, only the author will be able to see who liked them.
This feature was previously available only to Premium subscribers, who could “keep spicy likes private” by hiding their likes tab, as announced in September.
This hidden-like feature is among several changes since Musk purchased the platform for $44 billion (€40 billion) in 2022.
Other notable changes include renaming the platform, altering the logo, and initially removing blue verification checks from non-premium users, only to restore them later to some accounts.
These in-app changes have received mixed reactions. For instance, the removal of verification badges from prominent officials and news organizations sparked concerns about misinformation.
Additionally, the platform has faced increasing criticism from users and advertisers regarding content moderation and hate speech, which some researchers claim has risen under Musk’s ownership.
