Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri announced that the platform will start hiding likes for US audiences starting next week. Condolences to all those robots who are now unemployed from supplying the fake likes.

The hidden likes will be first rolling out to a limited number of accounts. The idea is to depressurize Instagram for young people and make it less of a competition. Instagram says it's the latest step in a quest to become the safest place on the internet. (this means people will just have to start liking themselves now.)

Here are my thoughts: Instagram knows people don't post as much because they're afraid of low like counts. By hiding likes, it will encourage people to post, which means more Instagram content and time spent on the app to monetize. Influencers depend on engagement, companies need to see their engagement in order to offer them brand deals. If they decide to go through with this (which they will) will influencers lose so much? Tricky question. IG is not getting rid of analytics. You can still see your likes and insights, and brands/agencies can still access that info / request it from you, which most of them already do anyway. But when people are able to see the likes, they are reminded to actually like the post. Removing the likes is going to reduce engagement. And the people impacted most by likes, mentally, are the influencers themselves. So allowing influencers to still see the likes is not helping. If someone wasn’t willing to comment and interact before, this is not going to make them do it now. And until IG fixes the algorithm to where posts are seen by EVERYONE it’s going to be an issue.

I think the IG thought process was that this might encourage people to comment and interact instead of like and move on. But yeah let’s make sure no one has hurt feelings because they get no likes.

Here’s what people are saying around the web. What are you thoughts on hiding likes?