Say goodbye to your Instagram likes.
Starting next week, if you live in the US you might discover that the all-important number that tells the world how many likes your Instagram post received has disappeared.
Instagram will experiment with hiding like counts in the US, Adam Mosseri the head of the Facebook-owned business announced at the WIRED25 conference in San Francisco on Friday.
"We will make decisions that hurt the business if they help people's well-being and health," Mosseri said on stage at event, Wired's Adrienne So first reported.
According to So, Instagram will hide like counts only for certain users in the US. It's part of a test that the company has already begun in some other countries as it responds to critics and tries to create a "less pressured environment" on the platform.
Instagram is testing hidden "like" counts in seven countries — Australia, Brazil, Canada, Ireland, Italy, Japan, and New Zealand. An Instagram spokesperson said that this announcement is an extension of these ongoing tests and will only affect a small number of Instagram users in the U.S.
Instagram influencers impacted by these experiments have told Business Insider that they are starting to feel the effects of this change on their brands because they found their posts getting much less reach than before.
Instagram's parent company Facebook is also reportedly testing this out for users in Australia. Likewise, YouTube plans to stop showing exact subscriber accounts for its channels.
You can watch Mosseri's talk below.
—WIRED (@WIRED) November 9, 2019
