Facebook and Instagram will allow hearts and thumbs to be hidden

It will soon be possible on Facebook and Instagram to hide the number of “hearts” and “likes”, without settling the debate over the potentially harmful effects of seeking authentication on networks.

Users of the two giant Facebook group platforms will have the option to deactivate the display of the ‘likes’ count under all content displayed on their feed, and thus either respond or not interact without being influenced by the opinion. From others.

They can also comment this popularity indicator for the photos and messages they post online.

“There is the consumer side who read and see the content, and the sharing side,” Adam Mosseri, president of Instagram, said at a news conference. “You can control on both sides.”

It will always be possible to know who gave a ‘heart’ to any content and thus can be counted on manually.

The frenzied search for “likes” worries many psychologists, especially with regard to adolescent mental health, who are exposed daily, often without hindsight, to a stylized or completely artificial vision of their environment and those around them. Not to mention the dangers of online harassment.

“Bad things happen on Instagram, we see them,” Mr. Mosseri admitted. “With a billion people (on the app), we have all the humanity, the good guys, the bad guys and the bad guys.”

“It is our responsibility to magnify the good and reduce the evil as much as possible.”

But the social media giant didn’t finally decide to delete the “likes” account, because the research conducted since 2019 on test groups was not conclusive one way or the other, according to the San Francisco-based company.

“The creators were so divided,” Adam Moseri said. “Young innovators were generally more anxious because they were trying to determine what their audiences were interested in. (…) already established influencers were more open to this idea, as they less needed to prove its worth.”

The new option does not change the process of the algorithm that selects which messages appear in custom chat threads.

The system predicts which content is most likely to interest each user based on many criteria, including the number of ‘likes’, tastes, habits, etc.

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