Elon Musk reveals changes to ‘likes’ privacy policy on X; netizens say ’pointless update’

Tesla CEO and SpaceX founder Elon Musk on Wednesday made an announcement that likes will now be ‘private’ on social media platform X, formerly Twitter.

“Important change: your likes are now private,” Elon Musk said after X Engineering account revealed the new changes.

Earlier, users on the social media platform could visit other users' pages and check what they liked on the platform. Only premium users were offered privacy. With changes in the company's policy, access to check likes has been restricted on the platform.

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The post on X's engineering account gave four key pointers about the new privacy policy as the notification stated, "This week we’re making Likes private for everyone to better protect your privacy.

– You will still be able to see posts you have liked (but others cannot).

– Like count and other metrics for your own posts will still show up under notifications.

– You will no longer see who liked someone else’s post.

– A post’s author can see who liked its posts."

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From this week onwards, social media users will continue to access their own likes, but the general public will no longer be able to access another account’s likes. A notification about the change appeared on accounts on Wednesday, indicating that the ‘Likes’ tab would no longer be visible on others' accounts.

Last month, X Engineering Director Haofei Wang signalled the upcoming privacy changes to ‘Likes’ on X as he claimed that public likes are incentivising wrong behaviour. He alleged that many people feel discouraged from liking "edgy" content in fear of retaliation from trolls, or to protect their public image.

Netizens strongly reacted to the recent announcement. A user stated, “I’m gonna like this post but you won’t be able to see it.” Another user remarked, “ Now no one will see how interesting my posts are?” 

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Mixed response from netizens poured in as a third user commented, “I’m liking this post & making a comment, so people know I liked it.” A fourth user wrote, “Pointless update. You could’ve made it optional. It’s essential for community members to look through our likes as they’re relevant to our brand.”

A fifth user remarked, “I can still see yours.” A sixth user suggested that it should be optional, “There should be an option to toggle on or off private likes. Why the hell do people like Hillary Clinton still have the ability to disable comments? This is the bigger issue imo.”