Facebook and Instagram now give users options to hide Like counts across all posts and to hide their own public Like counts from others
for your own posts and others Clare Duffy / CNN : Facebook and Instagram willl now let all users hide likes on posts Garett Sloane / Ad Age : Instagram ‘Drops’ a new place to shop as social commerce takes off Kendra Clark / The Drum : Social commerce levels up with new Instagram ‘drops’ feature Conor Cawley / Tech.co : How to Hide Like Counts on Facebook and Instagram Tweets: @mosseri : 👀 An update on like counts. Starting today, you can manage your experience in a way that works for you. You can choose to hide like counts on others' posts and on your own posts so people can't see how many likes you get. Rolling out on Instagram and Facebook. https://twitter.com/... @mosseri : You might've seen that we've been testing different options for a while and this update reflects the feedback we've gotten. We want you to feel good about the time you spend on our apps and this is a way to give you more control over your experience. https://twitter.com/... Lauren Linahan / @laurenwtvm : I LOVE that @instagram will be allowing users the options to hide likes on their own posts and news feeds. I think this simple change can do wonders for our mental health. @GMA “Comparison is the thief of joy.” Rich DeMuro / @richontech : so, you can now hide likes on instagram... which I think is great... regular people will do this to avoid the whole competition of it, but influencers need the likes to prove their value ... so they will carry even more weight now Ben Grosser / @bengrosser : to hide like counts on Instagram, for everyone else's posts, requires 6 taps through menus. to hide them on your own requires 3 more taps *every time you post* all this effort to hide one visible metric, leaving all the rest in place. IG is really hoping this doesn't catch on Sam Sheffer / @samsheffer : letting the user choose! unexpected 👍 good move https://twitter.com/... Phil / @philngyn : We can now all hide our bad engagement. https://twitter.com/... @hansel_mp3 : the implications here are actually massive it's not often we get a W in the mental health department via social media — here's to a more personalized, less neurotic experience on IG https://twitter.com/... Glenn Gabe / @glenngabe : Instagram launches a new shopping section called Drops, helping users find limited supply products “Consumers can make their Drops purchases directly in the Instagram app itself via Checkout on Instagram, not by visiting third-party websites.” https://techcrunch.com/... https://twitter.com/... Sarah Frier / @sarahfrier : Also interesting that Instagram saw no significant mental health/wellness impact in its like hiding tests. I'm not surprised. If likes still exist/are still default, it doesn't reduce my anxiety to simply not see the numbers. Sarah Frier / @sarahfrier : Something intriguing we learned from talking to @mosseri: Instagram, alongside tests to hide likes, also tested hiding followers. It didn't work, because new users look at other people's followers to see who is on Instagram. https://www.bloomberg.com/... Jason Kint / @jason_kint : It's like the option to clear browsing history or to have feed in chronological order. Takes work, they know most people won't do it but they are giving them choice and checking box. https://twitter.com/... @instagram : It's a way for you to have more control over your experience ❤️ Rolling out on Instagram and @facebookapp. More details 👇 https://about.instagram.com/ ... Taylor Lorenz / @taylorlorenz : IG talking about like counts as if anyone still looks at the feed @kerrymflynn : FB / Instagram is making hiding likes a ✨ choice ✨ “What we heard from people and experts was that not seeing like counts was beneficial for some and annoying to others, particularly because people use like counts to get a sense of what's trending...” https://about.fb.com/... See also Mediagazer
Context & Ripple Effects
Facebook’s earlier consideration of removing Like counts became a global toggle test in April. The tests found no significant mental-health or wellness effect, making the final approach a user-preference setting rather than a blanket removal.
The rollout also sits alongside Instagram’s Drops shopping section, which supports purchases through Checkout. That pairing matters because public engagement signals and in-app shopping are now being adjusted at the same interface layer.
First-order effects
- Facebook and Instagram users can separately choose whether to see Like counts on others’ posts and whether counts on their own posts are visible, giving creators direct control over a public engagement signal.
- Creators who enable the setting make their Like totals unavailable to viewers, while users who hide others’ counts reduce the prominence of popularity cues in their feeds.
Second-order effects
- Instagram’s Drops shopping flow remains available through Checkout even when users suppress Like counts, reducing the need for visible Likes to be a universal discovery cue for products.
- Facebook and Instagram are preserving follower counts after the global Like-count toggle test; a prior follower-count test failed because new users relied on that information, so the companies are changing one status signal rather than all of them.
Third-order effects
- If adoption is broad, Like totals become a less consistent cross-account benchmark for audiences and creators, while follower counts remain structurally important for onboarding.
- The pattern points to social platforms making engagement metrics individually configurable instead of treating them as universal interface features to be removed wholesale.
The trend: Social platforms are shifting from fixed public popularity metrics toward user-controlled displays while retaining the social-graph signals needed for discovery and onboarding.