Instagram Won't Show Like Counts Anymore, And It's Bad News For All Influencers

Earlier this year, Instagram began experimenting with hiding likes on posts in the app, in seven countries.

The idea was to get people to move away from toxic competitiveness, and instead start appreciating each others' posts. Now, they've announced that test is expanding.

Reuters

The test was run earlier this year in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Ireland, Italy, Japan, and New Zealand. It still shows you the handles that are liking posts, there's just no counter underneath the photo.

Now, that feature test is being expanded out to the rest of the world. It's still not universal, which means not everyone will see things that way. However, the number of people that will get this now will of course go up. So don't worry if you all of a sudden can't see the number of likes on posts. It just means your handle was included in the test.

The idea behind this is that people on social media tend to get too bogged down in their virtual popularity, counting "likes" and "favourites". Indeed there's precedent for this line of thinking, multiple research papers have speculated that people are more likely to be depressed the more time they spend on social networks.

"We are testing this because we want your followers to focus on the photos and videos you share, not how many likes they get," Instagram said when it first began the trial. And that's a great idea. You're more likely to appreciate even photos from handles that have no pull online, because you can't see a tiny like count. But there's at least one group of people not happy at all

Ever since the test began, influencers have been worried. It's an entire career that's based on being more popular than other people online. In fact, many influencers' contracts net them payment based on the engagement their posts get. So what happens when a metric to measure that is suddenly gone?

Does it then become more like the marketing industry where established players with big clients, draw in more customers based on those clients' reputations? Is the game over for anyone trying to become an Instagram influencer from scratch?

Perhaps, but it might not really be possible for Instagram to eliminate likes altogether. It's what the platform has built its success on. In the meantime, they have said they're trying to help content creators find other ways to keep sponsorships without it depending on like counts. There's no real solution out there just yet though, but it might still be a good move for general mental health.