Elon Musk’s social media platform, X, formerly Twitter, is set to roll out a new feature that will allow users to keep their likes private. This move is aimed at protecting users from potential backlash for their online activity.
What Happened: On Tuesday, it was reported that X would be introducing private likes, a feature that will hide users’ likes by default. This feature is already available to X’s Premium subscribers.
Musk later took to the platform and confirmed the report highlighting the importance of allowing users to express their preferences without fear of criticism.
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Last month, Haofei Wang, X’s director of engineering, spoke about the development saying that the intention is to protect users’ public image, particularly when liking “edgy” content. The Likes tab on user profiles will be removed, but users will still be able to see who liked their posts and the total like count for all posts.
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Why It Matters: Some users in the comment section of Musk’s post disagreed with the reasoning behind this development asking “What’s the point of a like other than broadcasting that you in fact ‘like’ the post.”
Other users agreed with the development, expressing happiness saying they can now like certain memes without any worry. However, a large section of people were more worried about the rampant adult content on the platform.
One user asked, “Another bullsh** update. Remove p**n instead.” Another person commented, “K. But anything you're gonna do about all the p*rn?”
Earlier this month, X addressed the increased adult content problem on the platform by introducing a new opt-in policy. However, the policy requires users to label adult content with a content warning, which addresses the issue to some extent but not completely.
Historically, X did not limit the posting of adult content, which has been used by sex workers and others to promote services like OnlyFans. The updated rules also apply to violent content, requiring similar warnings.
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