According to the company, the purpose of the change is to protect the public image of users.
This week, the like function of the messaging service X will become private, a company tells.
In the future, the user of the service will see his own likes, but no one else will. The number of likes is normally displayed below the messages, but it is not possible to browse the givers of the likes.
However, the author of the message can see who has given him a like.
The private liking function was already possible in X’s paid premium membership.
The reason for the change is privacy. The main owner of the company Elon Musk writethat it’s important to let people like posts without attacking them for it.
X’s programming manager Haofei Wang said a few weeks then, that the planned change is intended to protect people’s public image. According to Wang, for example, many users do not want to like “edgy” i.e. raffle/provocative/funny content, because they are afraid of retaliation from “trolls” i.e. internet bullies.
In practice, with the change, X aims to limit so-called smearing, where social media aims to raise an uproar against a person.