X Prioritizes Privacy: Likes Now Invisible to Others

X to set the platform's “likes” to private

On Thursday, June 13, the former Twitter platform X declared that it will now turn “likes” on the site private in an effort to increase user safety and engagement.

Users' ability to see other people's likes will be removed as a result of this modification, making it impossible to monitor someone's political or personal preferences based only on their likes.

This change comes as a result of left-leaning users ceasing to use the platform or cutting back on their activity as a result of Elon Musk's takeover in late 2022, which made the website a more haven for right-wing content.

The platform informed users via a pop-up notice that “We are making Likes private for everyone to better protect your privacy.”

“Liking more posts will make your For You feed better.” X said.

Personalized videos or posts are compiled in the “For You” stream and are suggested to individual users based on their past interactions and interests.

Musk said in another post that after going private, X had a notable increase in likes.

Prior to the modification, Haofei Wang, the head of engineering at X, stated that user likes “are incentivizing the wrong behavior.”

“Many people feel discouraged from liking content that might be edgy in fear of retaliation from trolls or to protect their public image.”