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Instagram hides Like counts in leaked design prototype
- thosakwe 8y agoI'm not 100% sure whether I understand the reasoning behind this. "Hiding Like counts could reduce herd mentality, where people just Like what’s already got tons of Likes." "Hiding Like counts might get users posting more since they’ll be less self-conscious." "Narcissism, envy spiraling, and low self-image can all stem from staring at Like counts." Are there any sources for these claims? And are they the expressed reasons for this?
- wongmjane 8y agoThat's just the journalist's take on the feature. In Instagram's app itself, the feature is elaborated as follow: > We want your followers to focus on what you share, not how many likes your posts get. During this test, only the person who shared a post will see the total number of likes it gets. source tweet: https://twitter.com/wongmjane/status/1118970853654290432 https://twitter.com/wongmjane/status/1118970853654290432 Instagram then stated to the press they are: > exploring ways to reduce pressure on Instagram is something we’re always thinking about
- twiss 8y agoIt's also possible that they're experimenting with this in anticipation of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19665221 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19665221 (a proposed ban on likes for children).
- aiyodev 8y agoPlenty of sources out there on network theory and information cascades.
- AGoodName 8y agoWe're on a site right now that hides like counts for these reasons :D https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2595605 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2595605
- chrisco255 8y agoI'm glad they stuck with hiding the like counts.
- baby 8y agoOh wow, that's really on point. I'd be cool if the front page would be like that as well for a week to see how it would be different. (pg if you're seeing this.)
- pjc50 8y agoThe sort order for the frontpage is already determined by a secret score that is only partly related to upvotes.
- bukka 8y agoMaybe I'm the minority, but seeing a post with a ton of likes will discourage me from liking it. One like has no impact among thousands. Same reason I don't upvote posts on the front page, they already made it there so why bother upvoting.
- aiyodev 8y agoOnly the first few votes give any kind of information. If you’re waiting to vote, it doesn’t matter if you’re voting with the crowd or against it. Your vote is meaningless after the cascade has started.
- founderling 8y agoThe private upvote counts are one of the few things I dislike about Hacker News. It feels like the system is hiding information from me that I would find interesting and that I could use to reason about the world. I would find it even more interesting if not only the upvotes would be public but also who upvoted. And for downvotes it could be an interesting experiment to make a statement mandatory explaining why one downvoted. (This comment got 5 upvotes so far)
- foepys 8y agoYou can't reason about the world through voting numbers in a forum primarily visited by tech people from SV. The bias is just too strong.
- icebraining 8y agoThat's what meta-analysis is for!
- kristopolous 8y agoHere's the classic referential thread on the matter https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2595605 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2595605
- stingraycharles 8y agoI believe the idea is that it prevents someone to upvote/downvote solely based on the existing score, and rather based on the actual content of the post. I remember back in the day that the vote count were public, and there was a lot of resistance to the change. For me, while on a micro-scale I feel like I'm missing information, I agree that on a macro-scale it's a net positive for the community.
- pjc50 8y agoI'm ambivalent about it; remember that every metric can become a gameable target. Knowing who upvoted seems like a fight-starter. The old Slashdot system gave the user a choice of upvote and downvote reasons - and the reader could assign their own multiplier! So you could decide that "funny" merited -1 rather than the default +1. I've never seen that anywhere else.
- nemothekid 8y agoThis is interesting - as Jack at Twitter also expressed the same sentiment in removing likes and retweets. Alot of twitter users fired back because it was to prevent large ($), but unpopular, accounts from being ratio'd (meaning being embarrassed by their comment-to-like ratio, if the ratio is high, it is being you said something dumb, that no one likes). The way instagram frames this is sort of healthier, but I can't imagine Facebook doing this just for social good.
- kristopolous 8y agoI've often thought social media would be far better without a share button or at least some larger barrier to doing it. Encouraging reposts is one of the big reasons the internet isn't fun anymore. The push model of content consumption needs a lot of fixes to live up to the pull model of content exploration The weird wacky web full of discovery is long dead. We need to rebuild it and undo the missteps that killed it
- Techonomicon 8y agoThe problem is people make honest livings off of doing things that at this day and age require these sorts of mechanisms within social networks to allow them to thrive and work for themselves vs a company. Many individual / independent creators 100% rely on the ability to reach others and people generally respond to the flock of many people liking / sharing a single post of some kind. I don't think it's fair to negate this as being useful. We with generally much better paying jobs to stress / work life balance ratio within the tech industry have the privilege of not having to worry about such things being taken away and literally taking our paychecks away as well.
- kristopolous 8y agoThat's a buggy whip argument; defending an industry that essentially nobody wants because there's economic activity in it somewhere. It can be made about just about anything. Besides, having a broken labor market is a pretty poor reason for intentionally perpetuating a broken internet
- countryqt30 8y agoAt Tencent's WeChat this is the default from the beginning, hiding all likes and comments.
- aylmao 8y agoIf I recall correctly it's the default for Instagram videos too— they only show you who has watched it but not how many likes it has. I might be wrong here— it's been a while since I see a video in the app.
- thegabriele 8y agoSocial networks are good for business and mating and this design choice goes in the direction of the latter. People will be finally able to secretely like each others and the cicle of life will go on. Too bad i'm starting to be too old
- geomark 8y agoToo bad i'm starting to be too old I am rather thankful that I'm starting to be too old for this bs.
- Techonomicon 8y agoI posted somewhere else on this thread, but putting a main one as well. What gets lost in the whole "get rid of like counts" argument is that doing so generally speaking just helps those who are well-known and really makes it more tough for others to get there. Many individual creators rely on likes, shares, reposts, w/e to drive their reach. Without a replacement that provides the same ability for the individual to gain that same reach this sort of change just hurts them. Sadly, people do care about how many others found something interesting as a reason for whether they should pay attention to it or not, so something like this can literally take money out of people's hands that make pretty honest livings at what they do (such as webcomic artists) and makes it even more tough for them to just get while working for themselves.
- WA 8y agoAssuming that everybody uses Instagram to gain more followers, likes, exposure. If you merely use it privately with your friends, not showing likes takes pressure and awkwardness out of it imho.
- rohan1024 8y agoThis is what is happening. Most people are running after likes and followers. Everyone wants everyone else to like their stuff and follow them. Of course this does not happen every time. To certain extent it breeds resentment and jealousy. People not validating their acquaintances might seem like a small issue on social network but it has real impact on relationships in real life.
- rohan1024 8y agoI agree with you. But content creator need to realize that if they are fully dependent on another entity for source of their income (which they don't even have business agreement with) they are setting themselves up for disaster. The entity can make changes to platform and it does not owe anything to content creators. You need to provide content through something that you own yourself. Instagram and other social platforms can help you promote your business but making these platform as source of living is shooting yourself in the foot.
- mindgam3 8y ago1. Bold move in this day and age: prioritizing quality of UX over business metrics. Props to whoever at Instagram product made the call on this. That said, if Instagram is serious about not being evil, the only option is ultimately to secede from Facebook. As long as they are part of F Corp, all of these tactics designed to recapture the Big Tech moral high ground are doomed to fail. The only way I could see this happening is if there were mass protests of Instagram employees demanding to be made independent. Kind of like the Google employee protests but potentially aided by some well-timed regulatory pressure. Not holding my breath on that, but it's a least a theoretical possibility, right? 2. "Leaking" a design prototype to Constine at TechCrunch is a very clever way to beta test a massive product decision like this. They know that hiding Likes will cost them engagement, which means revenue, but if they get enough good press about it, it might get the masses to start trusting facebook more, which would allow them to explain away the lower revenue numbers and avoid a potential investor revolt. By leaking the feature before it's even released, they can gauge the reaction of the market. It's quite a clever scheme, really. Anyway, barring some kind of miracle secession play, I'm sad to say that Instagram making these kinds of product decisions is like rearranging deck chairs on the ethical Titanic. But I'll give them an A for effort.
- wongmjane 8y agoIt's me who reverse engineer the Instagram app, demo the unreleased features, and then tweet about it, in which is then picked up by Constine as per usual: https://twitter.com/wongmjane/status/1118970853654290432 https://twitter.com/wongmjane/status/1118970853654290432 No employees told me anything about it before and after the tweet Though it's unsure if Instagram purposely planted this to get me tweet about it (because that description sounds like a prepared statement) ;)
- maxheadroom 8y ago>That’s how Instagram describes a seemingly small design change test with massive potential impact on users’ well-being. and >Hiding Like counts could reduce herd mentality, where people just Like what’s already got tons of Likes. It could reduce the sense of competition on Instagram, since users won’t compare their own counts with those of more popular friends or superstar creators. How sad it is that we've gotten to a point in society, where our valuations are determined by fake points on the internet. >And it could encourage creators to post what feels most authentic rather than trying to rack of Likes for everyone to see. How is that a bad thing? Am I missing something, here?
- rohan1024 8y agoBut who is saying that it's a bad thing. I think we all are on same page here. It's good.
- Criper1Tookus 8y agoRIP to all models and influensers in IG.
- z3t4 8y agoUpvotes/likes reflect popularity, it usually don't reflect quality. Take TV song/dance contests for example. HN community are often good judges but I sometimes see high quality comments being buried by clueless but more popular ones. And I usually get much more upvotes when commenting about stuff I know very little about vs when I comment about my domain of expertise.
- dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago> It appears that there’s no plan to hide follower counts on user profiles, which are the true measure of popularity but also serve a purpose of distinguishing great content creators and assessing their worth to marketers. This is the most ridiculous thing I've heard. Followers cab be bought cheaply and easily, they have nothing to do with distinguishing "great cibtent creators" (whatever that phrase may mean on Instagram, where a great work of art will always get less likes than a booblisp).
- goshx 8y ago> whatever that phrase may mean on Instagram, where a great work of art will always get less likes than a booblisp This is not particular to Instagram. It seems to have been the preference even before the internet was created.
- AznHisoka 8y agoYesterday, FB also removed a public API endpoint showing share counts for an URL (though their official button still shows the number). Not sure if these 2 things are related.
- kmfrk 8y agoFeels a little like pulling up the ladder for the Instagram accounts who've already established a presence on the platform. But maybe it'll work the other way around and give smaller accounts better, sigh, engagement?
- tablethnuser 8y agoI wrote a browser extension last year to hide like counts and such from the sites I visit and it definitely changes your browsing behavior for the better. Reacting to those vanity numbers is similar to slowing down to rubberneck. Here's the repo if anyone is interested. I still use it to this day but haven't worked on it in a while cuz I'm learning rust. https://github.com/a13o/disengaged https://github.com/a13o/disengaged
- latexr 8y agoInstead of an extension that only works in one browser, why not a blocklist that can be loaded into most adblockers? There’s an adblock filter for comments[1] which works pretty well. This is thematically similar. [1]: https://mute.bradconte.com/ https://mute.bradconte.com/
- gxwmg 8y ago...or a greasemonkey script. I'm definitely not installing an extension just for this.
- sinemetu11 8y ago...or a modified hosts file.
- tablethnuser 8y agoA set of greasemonkey scripts could work but my intended audience is more casual than greasemonkey users. Having a curated set of scripts bundled into its own extension makes the marketing story and installation flow easier. I also think the security will be better on my extension. You have to give greasemonkey edit permissions for all websites whereas I have a PR in the works where you only grant permission to the sites you want to disengage from. Even now it only asks for permissions to the subset of sites it modifies. Due to the nature of how web extension manifest permissioning works, greasemonkey can't offer this. If you look at their permission model it says "This add-on can: Access your data for all websites". IMO that's way more dangerous than your paranoia about a new extension with tight permissions.
- tlrobinson 8y agoDid Hacker News pioneer hiding upvotes, or was there prior art?
- Dirlewanger 8y agoI never saw what doing that really solves because comments are still sorted by upvote (aside from the occasional new comment being placed at the top, I actually like that), how many isn't really that relevant. Reddit does the same thing and it didn't really solve anything either.
- mrguyorama 8y agoHow old is Hacker News compared to image boards, which often have no voting or approval scheme at all?
- tlrobinson 8y agoSure, but I'm talking about sites that have a voting/liking mechanism and don't show the actual votes.
- britch 8y agoDoes anyone know how much of the current feed takes likes into account when choosing what to show you?
- tvladeck 8y agoNext step: hide follower counts.
- goshx 8y agoThat's how a lot of "influencers" make their money, however Instagram does not get a piece of those deals that happen out of the network.
- h0h0h0h0111 8y agoSlightly OT, but has anyone else no idea where to find the techcrunch targeted-advertising opt out?! I've gone through like 4 menus now and can't actually find the opt out; talk about dark patterns...
- makesthingspos 8y agoHopefully IMDB, Metacritic, Spotify, Amazon, and app stores will also empower users to make their own evaluations unencumbered by mob mentality by removing all metrics from public view.
- dewey 8y agoI’d not throw these into the same bucket. Reviews and ratings on these side are a whole lot more valuable than likes and vanity metrics on social media sites.
- floatingatoll 8y agoThis is a great idea, but it misses the mark in one key respect. While it professes to reduce the pressure on users, it continues to enable the “high score” addiction that drives engagement metrics — and thus advertising revenue — higher to Instagram’s benefit at their users’ expense. Instagram’s position is that they are testing whether hiding your post accounts from others is sufficient to stop people from agonizing over how many likes their posts have. I am glad that they are testing this, but I do not think it will be sufficient. Humans are incentivized to chase high scores in all respects, especially when the score is an integer ranging from zero to infinity. Hiding counts from others, but showing them to the user, may remove a certain degree of external pressure. However the innate drive to increase that integer count will continue to pressure users into taking actions based on the count. This keeps the core addictive loop of “post, check counts, agonize, repeat” intact, and will ensure that Instagram suffers no drop in engagement due to treating the core addictiveness of their platform. For those users that are subject to social pressure, the high score problem will also continue to be a source of obsession over approval by their followers. Social influence is extremely difficult to measure directly, and many people actively read the leaves of events in their lives to try and discern their standing in the eyes of others. Integer counts such as “likes” and “replies” feed directly into this obsessiveness, providing an inscrutable figure that obviously carries meaning if only sufficient time and energy are invested in consideration of it. This creates a second loop of addiction, which is often confused with the first. Removing all positive 0..N integer counts will be the only way to treat the addictive loops of today’s social media, and doing so would crater precisely the advertising-centric metric that they all depend so critically on: Engagement.
- your-nanny 8y agoI wish all downvoters would justify their downvotes with written replies, don't you?
- floatingatoll 8y agoI saw that comment elsewhere in this post’s replies and it’s better supporting evidence for why it’s harmful to give us integers than I ever could have dreamed of.
- pastor_elm 8y agothis will never happen because it is a literal job killer. Instagram is a business for all of its power users and the visible likes are absolutely essential for denoting 'success'.
- driverdan 8y agoAm I the only person who is less likely to "like" something that has a large number of likes? If something has already been liked hundreds of times there's no benefit in my liking it.
- hi5eyes 8y ago>there's no benefit in my liking it. ig aggregates content based on how you interact with posts
- EForEndeavour 8y agoThat further dissuades me from liking anything in particular.
- caprese 8y agoYes? Deconstruct what you wrote, in other circumstances why do you think there is a benefit to liking something that hasn't been liked before You already have expanded the call to action of affirming your resonation with a post to something that transcends that action - meaning you aren't clicking the like button solely because you like the post - you decide to click it based on completely irrelevant unrelated factors (just like everyone else has), but you act like other people must be acting strange
- LifeLiverTransp 8y agoThank you- this is really liberating.
- burtonator2011 8y agoThis is probably done to hurt social media analytics companies. Without these numbers being known the only company that knows them is Facebook which means they can sell them...