Yikes, it looks like they’re testing with this same experiment on Facebook too, starting in Australia.
If the results are as they expect, it wouldn’t surprise me if they end up going through with this on both platforms… strange days ahead for social media if they do.
Do you think it will be benefits for us or make it worse ?
These compnies do only whats in their best interest, hiding likes will negatively effect influencers business, but not much those who use and buy ads they can see and monitor how their ads perform anyway. I personally don’t care but i wish some new platform replace this garbage soon or at least take half of their audience and market.
Wondering how it will affect runing Ads for engagement 
Likes are hidden in Canada.
Seems very possible. I’m not sure if good or bad, but only time will tell.
Yeah, it’s all about their business nothing more, however that being said if they do start removing the main addictive features they may lose more users as a result, shooting themselves down, but who are we kidding? As long as they’ve got a stronghold on social media they’ll remain at the top, even if the userbase diminishes.
guys any of you know if this is really a test or if it will be a permanent thing? How long will it last?
if they do hide across the board both platforms --I really don’t see that many leaving the platform in the short term – I mean where does one go? It will be business as usual really – they are just to big. What it will do is open the door wider for a new gen of Social Media sites. Their monopoly can only last so long and history tells us without exception digital sites peak and new ones form often killing the old.( unless they change)
From what i readed somewhere if its true people in Canada or Australia actually loves hidden likes, so people who never had many likes (they are majority on IG) will love it hidden of course, influencers they will not… we will all adapt but IG doesn’t care if some random girls out there will lose sponsors or stop earning money, all they care is to make network best for normal average users that are clicking and making profit to brands who pay ads.
as they should after all it is their business. We need to simply move on and adjust as we have with everything they throw at us.
i mean, I would rather not see the likes at all than to be angry about the platform limiting my reach. probably they will bring back organic reach with hidden likes.
Anyone from Canada to give us insights about reach during those tests?
from what I read and seen – it seems popular in Canada – but then – (joke folks ) groundhogs are popular there too…( don’t need no french-english speaking dude coming to kick my butt from up there)
I don’t know anyone here in Canada happy about the likes being hidden. The only people who seem “fine” with it are the people that didn’t care in the first place.
The thing is the argument of it promoting better mental health is bullshit. The only people who care about their likes are the people posting the content…and we can see all that, just other canadians can’t (and just on the app, if I load up desktop I can see likes just fine). So if I personally would be upset that my posts aren’t getting a lot of love having others not see my posts get a lot of love doesn’t change anything because I can still see the analytics that my post sucked.
I’m still confident the primary reason behind hiding this information on the front end will be to try to sell access to this data on the backend by Instagram to analytical sites and agencies.