Instagram influencers in countries affected by the removal of likes see less engagement and slower growth in followers, causing posts to sink down in the feed
Paige Leskin / Business Insider : Tweets: @mattnavarra and @mattnavarra Tweets: Matt Navarra / @mattnavarra : I still think people do not understand this test. It's only hiding the like count on posts in select countries. Instagram is NOT testing removing the like button entirely or stopping users seeing who liked THEIR posts. You can still see how many and who liked your own post https://twitter.com/... Matt Navarra / @mattnavarra : Instagram's removing like counts test: “There's no audience applause at the end of a performance” - An influencer 🤣 https://www.businessinsider.com/ ...
Context & Ripple Effects
Instagram's hidden-likes experiment began as a Canadian test and was expanded to six more countries — Ireland, Italy, Japan, Brazil, Australia and New Zealand — in July. This report is the first read on what hiding the count does to the people whose livelihoods depend on it: influencers in those markets are seeing less engagement, slower follower growth, and posts sinking down the feed. Matt Navarra's clarification matters for how the story spreads: the test only hides like counts on posts in select countries, not the like button itself, and users can still see who liked their own posts.
First-order effects
- Influencers in the test countries lose the public like count as a growth engine — without the social-proof signal, their posts get less engagement and sink in the feed, compounding slower follower growth.
- Navarra's clarification caps the panic: creators can still see likes on their own posts, so the immediate loss is public display, not access to the data.
Second-order effects
- If the test extends to the US, the largest influencer market loses the like count as a public benchmark, forcing brands and creators to justify sponsored posts with private analytics rather than on-feed applause.
- Facebook's plan to run a similar like-hiding test of its own means the change would propagate across both platforms' creator economies at once, leaving no big-network alternative for influencers who want visible counts.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — hidden counts by default, user-controlled toggles later — influencer marketing re-prices around private dashboards and reach metrics, weakening the public vanity numbers that currently set creator rates.
- Platforms decoupling visible social proof from feed ranking would shift competitive dynamics toward whichever network creators judge by private performance data rather than public applause.
The trend: Social platforms are dismantling public engagement metrics, forcing the influencer economy to re-price around private analytics instead of visible like counts.