Instagram and Facebook users are now able to hide likes on their posts.
The platforms hope to make the experience less stressful so that certain users don’t appear more influential than others.
The social media platforms have been testing this ability since 2019.
This comes as a response to criticism that social media can be harmful to society. Users can still see a list of people who liked a post, but not a total count. Facebook said this give users the option, if they would like, to focus on the photos and videos being shared instead of how many likes a post gets. Before you share a post, you can hide the like count before sharing.
If you’d like to hide the like counts on the posts of others, there’s a new “posts” section in settings. This applies to all the posts in your feed.
Facebook also said in a blog post Wednesday that it’s looking for more ways to give people control over their user experience.