Facebook has officially announced that it is rolling out the ability to hide like counts on its social media platform and also Instagram. At the time of writing this article, the feature is now readily available for the latter application on both Android and iOS in Malaysia.
To activate the feature on Instagram, simply navigate to your main profile page and then tap the “three-lines” button on the top right corner. From here, head over to Settings, tap on Privacy, and then select Posts. In this section, tap the Hide Like and View Counts toggle to activate or deactivate it.
Alternatively, Instagram also allows you to hide like and view counts on existing posts, as well as new ones – therefore giving you free reign on post customisation rather than having the new feature enabled across the board. For existing ones on your profile, tap the “triple dots” icon on the upper right of each post and then select Hide Like Count. Meanwhile for new photos; on the last screen where with the caption box, tap Advanced Settings at the very bottom. The Hide Like and View Counts toggle will be the first option of this menu.
As mentioned earlier, the feature has yet to arrive on the Facebook app. Although, we’re not discounting the possibility that some users in Malaysia may have received it already. In any case, to activate it, tap on the “three-lines” icon on the bottom right corner in your Facebook app, and select Settings & Privacy. Then tap on Settings and scroll down until you find News Feed Settings. Select that, and tap Choose Reaction Counts toggle to activate or deactivate this feature. Much like on Instagram, users may choose to enable the feature on a per-post basis if they so wish.
User reactions were mixed when news regarding this feature started circulating from all the way back in 2019. Businesses and influencers were mainly against this approach, while a good number of regular users supported it – although most had assumed that the ability to hide likes and view counts on both Facebook and Instagram were going to be a permanent change at that time. Thankfully, that is not the case in the end, as the social media giant decided to instead have this new ability as an optional feature for users.
