LaDamaX · 7 answers · 4y
Thoughts/opinions on Instagram’s trial of hiding public “likes” on US accounts?
https://www.google.com/amp/s/later.com/blog/hidden-likes-instagram/amp/
Thoughts/opinions on Instagram’s trial of hiding public “likes” on US accounts?
https://www.google.com/amp/s/later.com/blog/hidden-likes-instagram/amp/
I find it very hard to predict what will change in user behavior and attitudes. I guess the number of likes under a post has a big impact on our attitude to the content of that post. "A lot of people like it, so it has to be good." I'm not particularly prone to it, but many people are. And if the removal of public like numbers leads users, especially young people, not to focus their values so much on social media, that should be welcome. But who knows if this will be the result?
Let's face it you probably cannot start with a social media outlet which is used by the users as a personal hangout that covers their thirst for vanity among other things and then undermine the vanity machine. I only follw a few people for their personal and/or artistic quality and their goal is to be viewed and be visible in the community as they are trying to live on their art. But in the US it seemed to be more like a social ranking machine done via FB and the likes, which seems in my view to be another means to cover the need for "success". Starting in US schools the system seems to favour in many ways "successful" kids and persons, but the "success" is rated by FB-likes, Insta-likes and such. In former times you had to have the biggest crowd of followers IRL in a schoolyard to be top among your peers. That now has shifted to virtual crowds. Most kids face that phase of social interaction where their "value" is ranked by their peer group and usually the best bully gets alpha status. To me it looks as if that sort of culture is especially severe in the US culture though it has affected many other cultures too. They social punishment for not belonging to the top peers seems especially severe in the US in comparison, hence the urge to fake likes and boast with them so that a childs life revolves around this. My theory is that the murderous school shootings may in part be contributed to by that type of culture. I've so far not faced any other suchlike school life that so rigidly sorts out children in "losers" and "winners". And I have seen Chinese and Japanese schools that are almost like torture camps. The kids there tend to break under social pressure and commit suicide, in the US it seems the broken ones are out for revenge in many forms, following the cultural examples of a true cowboy. So in my view the urge for vanity-likes and shooting up school children are two sides of the same coin maybe?
I'm interested to see how it'll play out; I think it'll be a good thing overall because I've seen and participated in the obsessiveness of "what time of the day do I need to post to get the most likes? what caption will get me the most likes?" etc. that obvi isn't healthy. as the article mentions, instagram stories have been pretty successful despite the fact that no one other than you can see who's watched it, and there are no likes even associated with ig stories. so I think it should be fine
I'm not really understanding how disappearing likes increases the safety or reduces the toxicity of Instagram. I mean I can see how not showing names might increase safety, but I gather they're going to still show names but not show totals. As for toxicity, I could understand hiding dislikes (which I don't think they even have), but.. *shrug*
I can kinda see what they are getting at - all of social media has really become about likes or 'the ratio' or whatever and instead of judging a post on the merits of its contents it becomes 'hurhur you got a thousand followers and only 42 likes you suck' I don't really have a dog in the fight so to speak, so my default position is that nobody HAS to use Insta, they can always bail if they don't like it
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