Instagram Is Hiding Likes to Protect Themselves, Not Their Users
By: Eduardo Morales
Tags: Social Media, Mental Health, Instagram, Instagram Marketing, Social Media Marketing

What Other Reasons Does Instagram Have to Hide Likes From Its Users?

If Instagram wouldn’t be hiding likes to protect their users, what would they be hiding likes for? In my opinion, these are the two most likely culprits.

1. Instagram is hiding likes to protect their reputation and business

Data shows that since early 2019, average Instagram engagement has declined from 1.54% to 0.9%, but if you’ve been paying attention to your Instagram account you know this decline has been happening for a while now. How do we know? Because many of us measure like numbers to gauge content performance, and we’ve seen our numbers continue to decline over time.

If you’re used to using Instagram often, it’s not easy to stop using it, even after the perceived value of your time on the platform decreases.

Yes, by hiding likes Instagram, makes it less likely that we’ll compare our like numbers to others, but when it comes to feeling unhappy because of likes, comparing our numbers is not the only culprit. The decline in engagement also is. When you spend a lot of time creating content and interacting on Instagram, your like numbers are the best indicator of the perceived return in value you are getting for your time. If your like numbers decline, so does the perceived value of your time on the platform, and if you use Instagram often, this is likely to affect your mental health.

Instagram isn’t protecting its users, it’s protecting itself. By hiding likes, Instagram will help alleviate the negative backlash that comes from declining organic engagement on a platform over time as well as protect their reputation as Facebook’s more engaging social media platform (which is essential to their business now that FB is in clear decline). Not only that, but hiding likes also makes it more likely to get more users to pay for sponsored posts as we try to make up for the continuing decline in organic reach. That is great for business, not necessarily for our mental health.

In a recent study of 154K Instagram users, the influencer marketing platform HypeAuditor saw a decline in likes from at least 30% of their following coming from users in the regions in which Instagram’s hidden like counts test is currently running. If this trend continues when Instagram rolls out like hiding in the USA, we can expect more people to be less happy with their Instagram accounts as well as pay more for sponsored posts to make up for the decline in engagement.

2. Instagram is hiding likes to further monopolize our data

Likes being visible make Instagram less valuable as a business. Why? There are a lot of companies out there making money from analyzing, surfacing, and visualizing your Instagram likes data. By hiding likes, Instagram is making sure those companies can no longer capture that value and now sets itself up as the only owner and purveyor of our likes data. This makes them the only entity capable of charging people to access it. Monopolized access to our data is great for business, not necessarily for our mental health.

I’m not saying that I know the intentions of the people who make these choices at Instagram; I don’t. I’m also not saying that hiding likes will not reduce the platform’s negative impact on our mental health. It might, although I am doubtful about that (if it clearly positively impacted users, wouldn’t Instagram be touting studies about it? They’ve obviously tested it, a lot).

All I’m saying is that we shouldn’t so easily give Instagram a big ol’ pat on the back because they say they care about their users’ well-being and health. If they really did, there would be many other product features that would make a bigger impact on improving our mental health, other than hiding likes.

For example, in an effort to protect my mental health, I’ve muted all of the people I follow on my personal account. Unfortunately, Instagram still surfaces their stories at the top of my feed in an effort to try and get me to engage with them again.

If they truly cared about our mental health, that feature wouldn’t be aimed at getting you to engage again. If they truly cared about our well-being, they would want us to choose what content we saw, not what their algorithm knows will keep us on the app for longer, they would give us control over how they use our data and content, or they would give their users an equitable value exchange for the free content they use to monetize, among many other things.

Caring about your user's well-being isn’t just something you say, it’s something you practice. So far, Instagram and Facebook have a long history of not practicing it, and it’s important we remember that. Facebook is one of the most powerful organizations in the world, after all.

By the way, if you want to learn more about how Instagram works, read these articles on how to create a visually appealing Instagram grid, everything you need to know about Instagram hashtags, how the Instagram algorithm works, how to make money on Instagram, why your Instagram account isn’t growing, how to create effective Instagram story ads, how to create a visually appealing Instagram grid, how to increase your Instagram engagement, how to create effective Instagram sponsored posts, how to check if you’re shadowbanned, how to create an Instagram repost account that makes money, how to monetize your Medium article, the best Instagram bots, how to automate an Instagram bot that isn’t spammy, the state of Instagram bots in 2020, how to increase your Instagram engagement rate, how to find the best times to post, as well as how to find the most valuable Instagram influencers, how to measure what an influencer is worth, how to measure your influencer marketing ROI, and how to reach out to influencers.

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