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Instagram lets users hide likes to reduce social media pressure

237 points by shivbhatt 5y ago

purplecats 5y ago
> A recent Oxford Internet Institute study also found there was “little association” between social media use and mental health in teenagers. I thought bbc used to be a credible news source. When did they stop being so?
- FlyingSaucer 5y ago
  The name of the actual study is 'There Is No Evidence That Associations Between Adolescents’ Digital Technology Engagement and Mental Health Problems Have Increased'[1]. I also personally feel like its incorrect based on my own experience, but the OII for now says that there is 'little evidence', although 'drawing firm conclusions about changes in their associations with mental health may be premature' [1]-https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2167702621994549 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2167702621994549
- martin_a 5y ago
  This seems to be some kind of mistake, yes. Having a look at what younger relatives are doing for likes and how important recognition and appreciation by friends in social media is for them, I find it hard to believe that there's "little association" when things don't go as planned.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > Having a look at what younger relatives are doing for likes and how important recognition and appreciation by friends in social media is for them, I find it hard to believe that there's "little association" when things don't go as planned. But...that’s how older generations have always responded to what younger people do for social approval, and older people interpreting what they see that way as a precipitous decline since their own youth is one of the oldest clichés possibly as old as civilization. > I find it hard to believe that there's "little association" when things don't go as planned. Maybe, but maybe that is just as true independent of digital engagement.
    - coldtea 5y ago
      >But...that’s how older generations have always responded to what younger people do for social approval That's a combination of (a) a relatively modern myth ("It was always that way"), (b) a cherry-picking from millenia for instances where that did happen (which wasn't "always" - many periods, even for centuries on end, had almost no change between generations regarding lifestyles. For some rural places that was even true for millenia.). (c) from the cherry-picked cases where it did happen, ignoring the subset that it was also a totally valid criticism (e.g. in the decline of golden-era Athens or the fall of Rome, or the Weimar Republic), when the change in culture and attitudes eventually killed the community/city/republic.
      - dragonwriter 5y ago
        > many periods, even for centuries on end, had almost no change between generations regarding lifestyles Many of the instances where we have records of this being a recurring complaint of adults toward the youth were in those times of little apparent lifestyle change; part of that ia that the distance of our perspective probably minimizes changes that were perceived as significant in the local context, but a bigger part is that, while objective changes in lifestyle or technology can provide something to tie the complaint to, the main driver of the complaint is not the change in society but the change in the observer’s position and perspective within society.
    - martin_a 5y ago
      As already written in the other comment: I find this result hard to believe because I think the offline experiences former generations had, would transer to online generations, too. But yes, the youth is always terrible. I've read that in the Hagakure, but I think it has already been mentioned/been a "fact" in ancient Greece, too. ;-)
  - coddle-hark 5y ago
    Young people have pretty much always optimised for the recognition and appreciation of their friends though. It’s just more visible to adults now, which is probably a good thing.
    - martin_a 5y ago
      Totally, yes. Just thought about how badly I wanted to be one of the cool kids in school. Failed terribly in doing that, and I also know how terrible I felt about that. That's why I'm wondering when the whole "seeking for appreciation"-thing has moved from real life to Instagram (kind of), are there no bad feelings, feelings of rejection and failure involved, when my new post doesn't get the likes I'm looking for?
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > It’s just more visible to adults now Its always been visible to adults and has been a perennial complaint of adults about the youth.
    - have_faith 5y ago
      The big difference is opportunity time. Previously you had occasional opportunities to impress your peers and evaluate their lives against yours giving you gaps to work between. Those gaps now no longer exist. The information and comparison is 24/7 and real time. I think comparisons to previous generations as being equal in goals vastly over simplifies vast differences in the landscape they operate in.
- Moodles 5y ago
  I can’t tell if it’s the BBC or perhaps just me getting older (and wiser, or dumber depending on your perspective) but I’d say the BBC has got worse over the last 5 years or so. It’s usually not factually incorrect, but I’ve definitely noticed the story selection and emotive language choice doesn’t seem neutral to me. I can tolerate non-neutral news outlets I guess, but what I dislike is one that purports to be neutral and takes tax payer money for it.
  - e17 5y ago
    It's the BBC that is getting dumber, not you my friend. I check in with the headlines every now and then and every time it's either government propaganda or bullshit Love Island celebrity nonsense.
    - headmelted 5y ago
      Also, why are we being forced to subsidize EastEnders? Whats the public benefit from that rubbish? CBeebies, CBBC - cool. Public benefit makes sense. BBC Science and Documentaries - Public benefit. Fully justifiable. EastEnders - Pay money to make other people less intelligent or we’ll fine you.
      - rsgrn 5y ago
        I've never thought of EastEnders from that perspective. I don't disagree. In theory, it could be used as a method of creating awareness and discussion of important life topics in a real life like familiar setting. And you can sort of see how they try to do that... but the need to have some new dramatic event every six weeks overshadows it.
        headmelted 5y ago
        And that’s the issue. It’s only a lifelike setting if your life is like that of a Jeremy Kyle victim (who’s lives are likely not like they are depicted at all). Give us money against your will to pay for things you don’t agree with or we’ll take away your access to live media from everyone else too. Now whether or not they can carry out the threats they’re notorious for or not, I’m just saying if it walks like an extortionist and quacks like an extortionist..
- nvilcins 5y ago
  The title of the BBC article [1] that references the study: > Teens, tech and mental health: Oxford study finds no link What the study actually says, according to the same article: > We couldn't tell the difference between social-media impact and mental health in 2010 and 2019, [..] > [..] the connection is not getting stronger. Hence, the title is an obvious lie. (likely to get more clicks, push a certain agenda, or both) Having a title contradicting the contents of the article has become extremely common these days. Unfortunately, it's also very common for people to only read the headlines (does anyone know the stats on this?), and I'm sure media outlets are fully aware of that. Hence, I would argue that articles with titles like these should be classified the same was as false information, and fought against accordingly. It's not enough to "clarify" the meaning in the article, when the title - the false claim - is all what most people take away (and disseminate further). [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56970368 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56970368
- dna_polymerase 5y ago
  I'd argue that the BBC got the study wrong. The authors state: > "Our main goal was to investigate how associations between adolescents’ technology use and mental health had changed over time." And conclude: > "Although we found little evidence suggesting that technology is becoming more harmful over time, [..]" There is no need for social media to become more harmful over time to it being bad enough already. The title of the study (There Is No Evidence That Associations Between Adolescents’ Digital Technology Engagement and Mental Health Problems Have Increased) gives away the constraint really. Yes, okay it did not become worse, but it might be harmful from the beginning.
AnonC 5y ago
I read about this on another site. I don’t use Instagram, but boy is this whole thing so convoluted! There are three different places to handle this.
totaldex 5y ago
Even with positive intentions, I'm not convinced this will solve the problem in any meaningful way. Turning off likes might be perceived as someone being unhappy with their social media status relative to their peers (ie, not getting as many 'likes' as their friends), which signals its own stigma. Users will be forced into a new dilemma: Enable likes and accept the 'social media pressure', or announce to everyone that they harbor some sort of insecurity about their social media status by turning them off.
- dewey 5y ago
  > Users will be forced into a new dilemma: Enable likes and accept the 'social media pressure', or announce to everyone that they harbor some sort of insecurity about their social media status by turning them off. Isn't that just for your own view? Others will still see the likes I'm assuming?
  - totaldex 5y ago
    It appears that this setting controls cross-account like visibility on posts: "Even if a user has Like Counts enabled, they will not be able to see the number of likes on accounts or posts that have hidden them."
    - yoavm 5y ago
      Sounds like the perfect solution if you want to say "we are releasing features that support a healthy usage of the our app", and at the same time make sure no one uses these features!
      - pfraze 5y ago
        FWIW Casey Newton posted a writeup- they ran trials for a couple years and the response was polarized (some loved it, some hated it) and they couldn’t find any clear indicator that it was healthier for people.
- tomcooks 5y ago
papito 5y ago
What I really need is a way to lock myself out of the account, especially Twitter, without suspending it. Like, disable the login for a day, but I am still on the platform. The electric fences I put up myself never work.
- david_allison 5y ago
  Sounds similar to the concept of 'self-exclusion' in the UK gambling industry: https://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/for-the-public/Safer-gambling/Self-exclusion.aspx https://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/for-the-public/Safer-g...
- gzimhelshani 5y ago
  I want this for League of Legends. Disable my account for 2 days, one week, one month etc. I don't want to lose the progress I made in the game by deleting the account completely but I also want to focus on my finals for a while.
  - pjerem 5y ago
    See my answer above :)
- headmelted 5y ago
  This is all anecdotal but I committed social media digicide a short while ago because I didn’t like how it was affecting my life. Constantly checking for likes, feeling an urge to participate in conversations to feel like “an important voice”. I got to the point where it wasn’t just directly affecting me but also the amount of attention I was giving my kids had dropped enough that I was mad at myself for becoming “that dad”. I made sure the github stayed live (with some pointers towards currently supported alternatives) so that anyone relying on that (now redundant) work wouldn’t be left high and dry - other than that I just quietly took my online presence down. I feel like I’ve lost nothing and have been much happier since.
  - mattgreenrocks 5y ago
    I found myself fantasizing about social media digicide, so I went for it. Totally worth it. You’ll know when you’re ready for it. I do miss keeping in touch with some older friends via my FB account. There is certainly a cost.
simonswords82 5y ago
In my view this is Instagram providing platitudes in an attempt get ahead of a growing consensus that social media is bad for people and society overall The harm inflicted by social media is infinitely more complex and sinister than a simple count of likes on posts.
- offtop5 5y ago
  I'll give it another 5 years before social media is viewed on the same level as cigarettes. The best thing I've ever done for my mental health was deleting social media. I realize I'm not significant enough to argue of other people about my own life. As long as you're not harming anyone else you're free to do whatever you want. Social media says no you have to shape your entire life around what people you'll never meet find cool. I stopped begging for approval from the masses, I stopped going to Reddit to get "advice" from people who only seek to chastise me.
  - simonswords82 5y ago
    Yep, same boat here. Deleted FB/Insta and avoiding altogether as it made me incredibly anxious. Still lurk on Reddit but no account there so I can't wade in to the comments. HN is the only forum I actively participate in.
  - durovo 5y ago
    And now you hang out at HN which is totally different from social media. Where people never seek approval from the masses. Chastising other people as a concept does not exist on HN. HN, the not-social media, does not even have a concept of likes.
    - drunkpotato 5y ago
      I realize you’re being sarcastic and that hacker news is a social media, however there is a difference in degree and what behaviors the site encourages. For me, personally, using HN and a very limited set of subreddits is an enjoyable waste of time, and doesn’t feel like an addiction. I would also credit HN as exposing me to technologies I might otherwise not have seen, and enriching my life in some small way. As for other social media, I deleted my Facebook and Twitter and feel like a mentally healthier person for it, and I think it’s a choice everyone has to make for themselves, but we should be providing information and support to people who quit. I would liken it more to alcohol use: many enjoy it in moderation, it’s an addictive problem for some. I strongly dislike the semi-compulsory nature of Facebook groups for activities that only organize on Facebook.
headmelted 5y ago
Or.. and hear me out here.. Just close your account completely? We’ve seen a great many of the people that built these systems come forward to explain that not only do they regret their role but that the harm being caused is worse than most people believe. I’ve also not seen or heard anyone (even people that currently work there) argue that these networks are in any way a net positive for society or the vast majority of participants. This should be a red flag to you as a user. Maybe we could do something similar to what goes on cigarette packs. BROWSING STAGED AND MANIPULATED PHOTOS ON SOCIAL MEDIA MAY BE HAZARDOUS TO YOUR MENTAL HEALTH.
- Tenoke 5y ago
  As a counterpoint I use Instagram maybe 2 hours a week total and get some minor value at little cost. I dont really see a benefit in closing my account.
  - whatever_dude 5y ago
    Like anything, if you know how to moderate your experience and balance your time and energy, you can derive something positive getting it. Speaking from personal experience, my Twitter experience got much much better once I got diligent about adding muted words for anything political or the outrage du jour. The problem is that not everybody does, or want to do that. Teenagers, for example, are highly influenceable (sp?) but their peers, so they get controlled by social media rather than the other way around. Same with people following celebrities/influencers. It's easy to build a collective consciousness that people compare themselves too, to their loss.
- moksly 5y ago
  I get a lot of positive experiences an connections out of both Instagram and Facebook. I use them solely for hobby purposes though. I’m part or the largest Danish Blood Bowl 2 league and it’s all organised through Facebook. So is almost all our table top tournaments, and it’s really an wonderful community, even when you branch out into the warhammer general community in Denmark. I use Instagram solely for painting miniatures, finding inspiration, sharing experiences and connecting with other people to learn from or teach them tips and tricks. This is all very anecdotal of course, but I think SoMe is just what you use it for. I share your worry, but I wonder if we’d get rid of the pressurised competitive society without the platforms, or they just made that part of modern western society very easy to share. I do wonder why people post pictures of themselves, or why people look at them. I get that there are a lot of beautiful people on platforms like Instagram, but there are so many that you sort of expect them to drown each other out. I don’t get it at least, but for hobby and creative purposes, I do think these platforms are kind of great.
deergomoo 5y ago
Instagram can actually be a nice place, if used as a platform to look at cool pictures and not at all as a social network. I never added any friends or family, I just follow accounts and topics I'm interested in. So my feed is almost entirely pixel art, cool architecture, and retro console mods, and it's very pleasant. Considering they're Facebook-owned, I see surprisingly little effort to cram low-effort garbage down my throat. I've even bought a couple of things via ads, as they seem to be pretty aligned with my interests (as you would expect from that level of data collection). The only real issue I've had is that a weirdly large number of people seem to tag their family photos with the #architecture hashtag.
- kuu 5y ago
  > The only real issue I've had is that a weirdly large number of people seem to tag their family photos with the #architecture hashtag. Because for most people hasthags are a way of getting people to view their picture than to label the content
- 72deluxe 5y ago
  When you run a Pi-Hole you see how much telemetry is being sent back with the DNS requests to many different domains. Insane, simply for scrolling through pictures. I think it tells you a lot.
  - jreese 5y ago
    FWIW, most of what happens with the unique subdomains is done with the intention of automatically routing you to the nearest edge/pop that has the best chance of either having the asset cached, or in the best location for routing your request to a datacenter that can serve the asset from disk. By generating the seemingly random subdomains when serving the metadata to the client, it can most efficiently fetch the media to be displayed. It's entirely possible (likely?) that multiple users in the same ISP/location to be vended the same subdomain/url, but physically/topologically distant users will get different urls.
- forinti 5y ago
  Same here, I don't seek out anyone on Instagram. I follow accounts that interest me, such as Museums, Ministry of Culture, language teachers, etc. The Hermitage Museum, for example, posts excellent content.
RileyJames 5y ago
We’ve had likes on Instagram hidden in Australia, and maybe NZ for quite some time. Maybe it’s not everyone, but I know my account no longer shows likes on any posts. I was unaware it could be turned off. I don’t really use it much now anyway, but I did like this feature. It was one less metric to be distracted by, you either thought the photo was good, or bad, rather than agreed with others or not. I prefer to make a decision for myself and then see the general opinion. But my Instagram was 80% my friends, unlike some of my close friends who have horrible comparative relationships with people they don’t know on Instagram. And the likes analytics are big part of that. They have since stopped using it, but I feel removing likes counts is a factor in that decision. Instagram story rants are a whole different ball game...
samuelizdat 5y ago
It's not likes giving people anxiety, it's the gaze of the panopticon.
qwerty456127 5y ago
We should probably go the opposite way and increase it to absurd like don't stop running or don't eat until you get enough likes... /s
whywhywhywhy 5y ago
If they truly cared about users mental health FB/IG and Twitter would also add a switch in the options to hide all political discussion.
- kylehotchkiss 5y ago
  It's third party but I did almost exactly this with Tweetbot's mute feature. A lot of political topics can be summarized in a few buzzwords. Twitter tends to be much more focused on positivity and work topics since I've made this change.
  - whywhywhywhy 5y ago
    You can do this on standard Twitter too, and I do. But it's a game of whack a mole, every few weeks theres another political hot topic that floods the timeline and I have to add another word to the blocklist which is now over 1000 words. What frustrates me is I know Twitter knows these topics are political, I know they could add a switch to hide it all but I also suspect they don't want to because they consider it important that I hear about what they consider important. America is not the world but the rest of the world is subjected constantly to events and outrage as if it is the whole world because the people running these platforms only have a very small perspective of what the world is.
- mixmastamyk 5y ago
  I did that manually last year by blocking all lowbrow sources (orgs and individuals) in the FB news feed.
hn8788 5y ago
It seems silly, but I think this could actually be helpful for some people. I have my upvotes hidden on reddit because I found myself regularly checking the site after I would post, just to see if the number of upvotes I received had increased. It's not like it was making me feel pressure or depressed if a post didn't get votes, but it felt the same way video games feel when you try to get a high score. Hiding the vote count made it so I don't get distracted by the feeling of wanting to see if my "score" is going up.
- SamBam 5y ago
  How do you do that? I see an option in my Reddit preferences to "make my votes public," but it doesn't seem like this hides votes on my own posts from me.
  - skeletonjelly 5y ago
    Maybe a part of RES? https://redditenhancementsuite.com/ https://redditenhancementsuite.com/
subpixel 5y ago
To be clear, this is a _per post_ selection, that defaults to off. So, any potential impact here seems to be throttled, intentionally.
zelon88 5y ago
I must've been in the testing batch because in 2019 my Instagram simply stopped telling me how many people had liked my post and I could not for the life of me figure out how to fix that. I just checked and for the first time since I can remember I can see how many people like my posts again. I feel like a quick notification informing me that I was part of a study would have been appropriate.
- Nagyman 5y ago
  IIRC, it was a permanent change for everyone. This most recent change re-adds the ability to see counts.
  - patorjk 5y ago
    I've always been able to see my like count. I've been waiting to see if it'd disappear, but it never did. I post regularly too.
cblconfederate 5y ago
This could be considered a landmark that marks the end of social manipulative media. Good riddance you won't be missed (Because hiding/unhiding will be the next social signaling)
geden 5y ago
Now we just need Spotify to hide play counts... These have a terrible effect on artists.
- 72deluxe 5y ago
  Yes, and also need to hide the speedometer in cars because my mother-in-law drives incredibly slowly and being a passenger has a negative effect on my mental health. We also need to abolish the "top apps" features in the various app stores because my apps didn't sell well and it had a terrible effect on me. We also need to ensure that everyone in the Formula 1 finishes at the same time, holding hands, because the "losers" at the end didn't win and they felt bad.... Where does the madness end?? It turns out that life is unfair - who knew?!
  - comfyinnernet 5y ago
    I thought I'd seen bad analogies before, but I had no idea what was possible.
    - 72deluxe 5y ago
      Haha thank you! That genuinely made me laugh haha You are right - they are terrible analogies, and I am proud of them.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
terminalserver 5y ago
“Cigarette companies allow smokers to choose not to smoke cigarettes”
defulmere 5y ago
Pixelfed (federated network similar to Instagram) made a similar move about a month ago: https://mastodon.social/@pixelfed/106161269947338845 https://mastodon.social/@pixelfed/106161269947338845 I missed the counts at first, but after a week or so I stopped noticing.
noisy_boy 5y ago
I am waiting this to be followed by "premium" tier for consumers that allows them to see "hidden" likes.
ChrisArchitect 5y ago
what I don't get about this is it seemed to me across multiple accounts that this has been in effect for a year maybe two! Gotten used to it, not news etc. I know, wasn't 'global' -- but when it's rolled out in major markets like US, Canada, probably a bunch of EU, Australia etc..... it's totally a normal thing by now. 2 years! previous discussion about the roll out: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21491648 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21491648
rchaud 5y ago
Remember all the way back to 2013 when FB switched to the algo-driven Timeline instead of the Facebook wall newsfeed? A lot of people hated that update, as it fundamentally changed the user experience of FB permanently. But not me. With Timeline, the wall post counter was no longer displayed on your profile. That had long been a source of embarrassment for me as so few people posted on my wall. It didn't matter IRL, but in college, you do feel that you're not doing something right if your page is so inactive compared to those of your peers. Was I really that uninteresting? It was a proxy measure of my relative social popularity, and it sucked, because I had no interest in juicing these numbers. So they stayed low for years until the metric was finally hidden from view.
MajorBee 5y ago
> Mr Mosseri said there had been a "polarised" reaction from creators - accounts which make money through brand partnerships and advertising on the platform - but that the new feature didn’t affect revenues. Considering how many people make a living directly or indirectly on Instagram and/or other social media platforms, I wonder what shape the opposition will take to these steadily growing measures of user "protection". I understand Instagram/Facebook, at the end of the day, will not take actions that will harm their expected growth or revenue, however, that does not mean influencers won't get shafted in some way.
saos 5y ago
This is an app I happily deleted years ago and life has been so good ever since
antirez 5y ago
It requires a very high amount of naiveness to think this could solve the issue. Only thing that will help is education of children, so that they understand their place in the world, to accept themselves, that the aesthetic standards provided in social networks are very high (but yet, as a central European my sensibility is a bit different than the one in other places -- I would suggest that this must be a stimulus to avoid gaining weight, to train, and so forth), that random appreciation in terms of "likes" is not a sensible measure of how much a person is worth, and so forth.
- KittenInABox 5y ago
  I doubt that the only thing that will help is education. Education cannot win over something where other, more educated people are putting full-time careers in psychological hijacking of children. A 12 year old doesn't stand a chance no matter how much they accept themselves. This stuff needs to be regulated like cigarettes.
  - antirez 5y ago
    I don't agree because the contact with real teenagers at school and other places where children meet was as brutal as it is today even in the past. Now there are new elements, that is, the fact you have to confront yourself with a lager audience of people and you can see unreal standards. But even at school with 400 children there will be the extremely pretty, the extremely good at sports, and so forth. And what is likes in social networks, in the real world translates to certain folks getting all the attention and other being regarded as trash. I think that certain problems that are embedded in being humans in a modern society are now all attributed to social networks, but this is not the case. Similarly people already used to vote for crazy folks: we in Italy had Berlusconi in '90s. Before there was Hitler and Mussolini. Similarly to think that US got Trump because social networks is a simplification that fails to capture reality.
    - lupire 5y ago
      School bullying is bad, but scaling it up to global bullying is worse.
homedepotdave 5y ago
They would need to make this the default if they want it to work at all.
nipponese 5y ago
Just add parental controls: No like count, no comments, no @ mentions. The kids can still express themselves creatively and they can't be bullied through features.
Haunted_Cabbage 5y ago
Sprout Social - Please ignore.
hdsmsk 5y ago
Will Instagram allow users to hide the explore/reels pages which are algorithmically designed to be addicting?
Rabei 5y ago
Any product/platform where the relevant metric to value your interaction with it is engagement has all the incentives to become harmful for you as end user. We should realize this, and move accordingly, does not matter how much we try to regulate it the incentives always end as harmful.
crossroadsguy 5y ago
It was mostly the lack of any usefulness. But one of the other major reasons I deleted my Facebook years ago was that I used to feel disappointed when one of my posts had less comments or likes. I knew it was time to delete that social network. Children and teenagers could have life altering effects due to constant exposure to such experiences on these sites.
nacho2sweet 5y ago
They had disabled showing likes here in Canada for a couple of years it seemed like then I got a message when I opened the app "would you like to see like totals?". Anyways the app is almost completely unusable now with the amount of ads it shows.
Strs2FillMyDrms 5y ago
This wont change anything. Social media has made the entirety of humanity aware that civilization has been built on its entirety by a discriminatory principle, in all aspects, and all of them can be traced back to a genetic discrimination. When this is positioned against humans attempt at transcending nature (with laws, politics and science) it becomes a matter of choice. At the degree that our species is able to choose their sexual partners, the genetic "gap" of what we deem attractive will accelerate the same way dog breeds had been "evolving" since it became popular to breed them, which is just a couple hundred years.
- halsom 5y ago
  The division most significant to Instagram is social class, not “discrimination.”
  - Strs2FillMyDrms 5y ago
    I am using the word discrimination in a general sense. It's not *just* the color or race of someone's skin, but also a lot other factors. If we trace back the repeating attributes of social class and wealth they all tend to gravitate to similar genetical discriminations (from wikipedia: "ability to distinguish one thing from another.") And once the discrimination crosses the ingroup barrier, then the measure keeps "ranking" them among the different outgroups. Before the internet the ingroups were not measured against outgroups as much.
freewizard 5y ago
It’s definitely a progress for Instagram but probably a little one if the algorithm sorting is not changed. For those who may need, there have been browser addons for Twitter and Facebook to do the same. [1] Also worth noting Mastodon has this demetricator feature built in since quite a while ago. [1] https://github.com/bengrosser https://github.com/bengrosser
notjes 5y ago
Hiding CNN, MSNBC, NYT from all citizens would increase the mental health, and physical health, of all citizens A LOT.
- SQueeeeeL 5y ago
  I always enjoy people who think newspapers are on par with television which is literally on 24/7 and is extremely loud. Like, I don't know anyone who reads the NYTs, but I have boat load of aunts and uncles who just leave cable news running all the time
neolog 5y ago
Dang, Why is there a total upvote count for users? I think it makes me focus excessively on social status -- after all, it's right next to my name. What would you think about removing it?
- eganist 5y ago
  I'd be quite content with the option of hiding mine. There's zero programmatic value to me or any other HN readers (we don't have sub-HNs we have to moderate ourselves), and I tend to determine credibility by reviewing a person's past submissions and comments rather than gleaning a simple score. For what little that's worth.
spoonjim 5y ago
This is akin to the ability to "de-badge" a car, offered by German manufacturers, where the manufacturer logo is visible but the specific model is not. I.e. a Mercedes SL could be a $80,000 V6 or a $160,000 twin-turbo V12 and unless someone was clued into the differences (like the exhaust pipes) they wouldn't know. I've noticed anecdotally that in the US, most of the de-badged cars are the low end models -- people don't want to be known as driving the cheapest end of the range. In Northern Europe, the de-badged cars are generally the highest end models. Wonder if there's a deeper learning to be found there.
- bschne 5y ago
  Funny, I always thought people did that for aesthetic reasons because they liked the cleaner look.
  - pc86 5y ago
    That's certainly part of it, and if I was going to buy a car at the SL level I'd probably debadge regardless of the trim level. But I'm sure there are people on one end of the spectrum who don't want to advertise their $150-200k car, and people on the other end who want to make others think it's a $150-200k car.
- alexanderchr 5y ago
  > Wonder if there's a deeper learning to be found there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante
- fy20 5y ago
  The whole indirect signalling of cars is very interesting. In my country (North/Eastern Europe) you pay more (€500-€2000) for a license plate that has certain combinations of numbers such as 123 or 747. I've noticed that pretty much every Porsche has a plate like that. It's kind of silly, because people who have no clue that exists won't care at all. You can also go full on custom plates, the funniest I saw recently was someone who had H0DL... on a Toyota RAV4 :D I guess the plate cost 20% the price of the car. I used to live in a Middle Eastern country where the plates were simply Latin numbers, combinations didn't matter, but if you wanted a shorter plate you had to pay more. If you had a 1 or 2 character plate (which is at least $500k) supposedly girls would just leave their phone numbers on your car, regardless of what car you had.
nonbirithm 5y ago
It makes me think: why is a successful company which introduced a feature to supposedly improve the product beginning to consider it's better for some users to remove it instead? I think we will regret the day when we realize we've innovated and revolutionized technology to the point where it can overpower our minds. Humans seem to be really good at designing engagement traps when they have all the tools, look to the future and see all the possibilities before them. These people pay millions of dollars for you to choose their app over writing some words on paper, or going for a hike, or any other action you could take. Also, I don't think Instagram would offer the option to disable likes if they didn't believe it would ultimately help them retain more users.
annadane 5y ago
Cool! Now let us browse (and maybe give us a chronological feed?) without logging in maybe?
Tomminn 5y ago
How exactly does this mechanic work? If I hide likes on one of my posts, can no-one who views it see like count? Does this mean the liker's are also hidden? Or is the information about the number of likes just one more click away for the viewer or the post?
xg15 5y ago
Do I understand this correctly, that you can only make likes invisible to yourself? This seems about as useful as the "if you don't like it, just pretend it isn't there" school of moderation - namely not useful at all. Humans are social beings and acutely aware of status indicators. A like count is a status indicator, even if a stupid one. By hiding the count for everyone, the indicator would be removed, which I imagine could actually make some change. But if a user can only remove the count for themselves, fully knowing that everyone else is still seeing it, I don't see how anything more is archieved than putting thrm as a disadvantage and potentially causing even more anxiety.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > Do I understand this correctly, that you can only make likes invisible to yourself? > This seems about as useful as the "if you don't like it, just pretend it isn't there" school of moderation - namely not useful at all. But a feature like that makes "pretending it isn't there" much, much easier. I know from experience: Metafilter has had a similar feature for at least a decade, and it does help lessen a lot of the negative psychological effects caused by "likes."
pessimizer 5y ago
Without likes people will have no idea if people are reading their posts other than comments, which are rare compared to low-effort "like" clicks. It's not going to work.
drannex 5y ago
This has always been one of my favorite features of Tumblr, the ability to hide your likes and who you follow. Not only that, but Tumblr doesn't show follower counts - something that is immensely useful (especially as someone who had over a million) and you can implement your own if you want. It gives you a concept of social privacy in at least the things that matter - your network. I hope Twitter follows suit.
elenaturner 5y ago
I though people like to show off the like count on insta...
hellothereworld 5y ago
Wow my mental health seems to have improved significantly since they added this feature!

237 points by shivbhatt 5y ago

> A recent Oxford Internet Institute study also found there was “little association” between social media use and mental health in teenagers. I thought bbc used to be a credible news source. When did they stop being so?

FlyingSaucer 5y ago
The name of the actual study is 'There Is No Evidence That Associations Between Adolescents’ Digital Technology Engagement and Mental Health Problems Have Increased'[1]. I also personally feel like its incorrect based on my own experience, but the OII for now says that there is 'little evidence', although 'drawing firm conclusions about changes in their associations with mental health may be premature' [1]-https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2167702621994549 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2167702621994549
martin_a 5y ago
This seems to be some kind of mistake, yes. Having a look at what younger relatives are doing for likes and how important recognition and appreciation by friends in social media is for them, I find it hard to believe that there's "little association" when things don't go as planned.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > Having a look at what younger relatives are doing for likes and how important recognition and appreciation by friends in social media is for them, I find it hard to believe that there's "little association" when things don't go as planned. But...that’s how older generations have always responded to what younger people do for social approval, and older people interpreting what they see that way as a precipitous decline since their own youth is one of the oldest clichés possibly as old as civilization. > I find it hard to believe that there's "little association" when things don't go as planned. Maybe, but maybe that is just as true independent of digital engagement.
  - coldtea 5y ago
    >But...that’s how older generations have always responded to what younger people do for social approval That's a combination of (a) a relatively modern myth ("It was always that way"), (b) a cherry-picking from millenia for instances where that did happen (which wasn't "always" - many periods, even for centuries on end, had almost no change between generations regarding lifestyles. For some rural places that was even true for millenia.). (c) from the cherry-picked cases where it did happen, ignoring the subset that it was also a totally valid criticism (e.g. in the decline of golden-era Athens or the fall of Rome, or the Weimar Republic), when the change in culture and attitudes eventually killed the community/city/republic.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > many periods, even for centuries on end, had almost no change between generations regarding lifestyles Many of the instances where we have records of this being a recurring complaint of adults toward the youth were in those times of little apparent lifestyle change; part of that ia that the distance of our perspective probably minimizes changes that were perceived as significant in the local context, but a bigger part is that, while objective changes in lifestyle or technology can provide something to tie the complaint to, the main driver of the complaint is not the change in society but the change in the observer’s position and perspective within society.
  - martin_a 5y ago
    As already written in the other comment: I find this result hard to believe because I think the offline experiences former generations had, would transer to online generations, too. But yes, the youth is always terrible. I've read that in the Hagakure, but I think it has already been mentioned/been a "fact" in ancient Greece, too. ;-)
- coddle-hark 5y ago
  Young people have pretty much always optimised for the recognition and appreciation of their friends though. It’s just more visible to adults now, which is probably a good thing.
  - martin_a 5y ago
    Totally, yes. Just thought about how badly I wanted to be one of the cool kids in school. Failed terribly in doing that, and I also know how terrible I felt about that. That's why I'm wondering when the whole "seeking for appreciation"-thing has moved from real life to Instagram (kind of), are there no bad feelings, feelings of rejection and failure involved, when my new post doesn't get the likes I'm looking for?
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > It’s just more visible to adults now Its always been visible to adults and has been a perennial complaint of adults about the youth.
  - have_faith 5y ago
    The big difference is opportunity time. Previously you had occasional opportunities to impress your peers and evaluate their lives against yours giving you gaps to work between. Those gaps now no longer exist. The information and comparison is 24/7 and real time. I think comparisons to previous generations as being equal in goals vastly over simplifies vast differences in the landscape they operate in.
Moodles 5y ago
I can’t tell if it’s the BBC or perhaps just me getting older (and wiser, or dumber depending on your perspective) but I’d say the BBC has got worse over the last 5 years or so. It’s usually not factually incorrect, but I’ve definitely noticed the story selection and emotive language choice doesn’t seem neutral to me. I can tolerate non-neutral news outlets I guess, but what I dislike is one that purports to be neutral and takes tax payer money for it.
- e17 5y ago
  It's the BBC that is getting dumber, not you my friend. I check in with the headlines every now and then and every time it's either government propaganda or bullshit Love Island celebrity nonsense.
  - headmelted 5y ago
    Also, why are we being forced to subsidize EastEnders? Whats the public benefit from that rubbish? CBeebies, CBBC - cool. Public benefit makes sense. BBC Science and Documentaries - Public benefit. Fully justifiable. EastEnders - Pay money to make other people less intelligent or we’ll fine you.
    - rsgrn 5y ago
      I've never thought of EastEnders from that perspective. I don't disagree. In theory, it could be used as a method of creating awareness and discussion of important life topics in a real life like familiar setting. And you can sort of see how they try to do that... but the need to have some new dramatic event every six weeks overshadows it.
      - headmelted 5y ago
        And that’s the issue. It’s only a lifelike setting if your life is like that of a Jeremy Kyle victim (who’s lives are likely not like they are depicted at all). Give us money against your will to pay for things you don’t agree with or we’ll take away your access to live media from everyone else too. Now whether or not they can carry out the threats they’re notorious for or not, I’m just saying if it walks like an extortionist and quacks like an extortionist..
nvilcins 5y ago
The title of the BBC article [1] that references the study: > Teens, tech and mental health: Oxford study finds no link What the study actually says, according to the same article: > We couldn't tell the difference between social-media impact and mental health in 2010 and 2019, [..] > [..] the connection is not getting stronger. Hence, the title is an obvious lie. (likely to get more clicks, push a certain agenda, or both) Having a title contradicting the contents of the article has become extremely common these days. Unfortunately, it's also very common for people to only read the headlines (does anyone know the stats on this?), and I'm sure media outlets are fully aware of that. Hence, I would argue that articles with titles like these should be classified the same was as false information, and fought against accordingly. It's not enough to "clarify" the meaning in the article, when the title - the false claim - is all what most people take away (and disseminate further). [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56970368 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56970368
dna_polymerase 5y ago
I'd argue that the BBC got the study wrong. The authors state: > "Our main goal was to investigate how associations between adolescents’ technology use and mental health had changed over time." And conclude: > "Although we found little evidence suggesting that technology is becoming more harmful over time, [..]" There is no need for social media to become more harmful over time to it being bad enough already. The title of the study (There Is No Evidence That Associations Between Adolescents’ Digital Technology Engagement and Mental Health Problems Have Increased) gives away the constraint really. Yes, okay it did not become worse, but it might be harmful from the beginning.

AnonC 5y ago

I read about this on another site. I don’t use Instagram, but boy is this whole thing so convoluted! There are three different places to handle this.

totaldex 5y ago

Even with positive intentions, I'm not convinced this will solve the problem in any meaningful way. Turning off likes might be perceived as someone being unhappy with their social media status relative to their peers (ie, not getting as many 'likes' as their friends), which signals its own stigma. Users will be forced into a new dilemma: Enable likes and accept the 'social media pressure', or announce to everyone that they harbor some sort of insecurity about their social media status by turning them off.

dewey 5y ago
> Users will be forced into a new dilemma: Enable likes and accept the 'social media pressure', or announce to everyone that they harbor some sort of insecurity about their social media status by turning them off. Isn't that just for your own view? Others will still see the likes I'm assuming?
- totaldex 5y ago
  It appears that this setting controls cross-account like visibility on posts: "Even if a user has Like Counts enabled, they will not be able to see the number of likes on accounts or posts that have hidden them."
  - yoavm 5y ago
    Sounds like the perfect solution if you want to say "we are releasing features that support a healthy usage of the our app", and at the same time make sure no one uses these features!
    - pfraze 5y ago
      FWIW Casey Newton posted a writeup- they ran trials for a couple years and the response was polarized (some loved it, some hated it) and they couldn’t find any clear indicator that it was healthier for people.
tomcooks 5y ago

papito 5y ago

What I really need is a way to lock myself out of the account, especially Twitter, without suspending it. Like, disable the login for a day, but I am still on the platform. The electric fences I put up myself never work.

david_allison 5y ago
Sounds similar to the concept of 'self-exclusion' in the UK gambling industry: https://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/for-the-public/Safer-gambling/Self-exclusion.aspx https://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/for-the-public/Safer-g...
gzimhelshani 5y ago
I want this for League of Legends. Disable my account for 2 days, one week, one month etc. I don't want to lose the progress I made in the game by deleting the account completely but I also want to focus on my finals for a while.
- pjerem 5y ago
  See my answer above :)
headmelted 5y ago
This is all anecdotal but I committed social media digicide a short while ago because I didn’t like how it was affecting my life. Constantly checking for likes, feeling an urge to participate in conversations to feel like “an important voice”. I got to the point where it wasn’t just directly affecting me but also the amount of attention I was giving my kids had dropped enough that I was mad at myself for becoming “that dad”. I made sure the github stayed live (with some pointers towards currently supported alternatives) so that anyone relying on that (now redundant) work wouldn’t be left high and dry - other than that I just quietly took my online presence down. I feel like I’ve lost nothing and have been much happier since.
- mattgreenrocks 5y ago
  I found myself fantasizing about social media digicide, so I went for it. Totally worth it. You’ll know when you’re ready for it. I do miss keeping in touch with some older friends via my FB account. There is certainly a cost.

simonswords82 5y ago

In my view this is Instagram providing platitudes in an attempt get ahead of a growing consensus that social media is bad for people and society overall The harm inflicted by social media is infinitely more complex and sinister than a simple count of likes on posts.

offtop5 5y ago
I'll give it another 5 years before social media is viewed on the same level as cigarettes. The best thing I've ever done for my mental health was deleting social media. I realize I'm not significant enough to argue of other people about my own life. As long as you're not harming anyone else you're free to do whatever you want. Social media says no you have to shape your entire life around what people you'll never meet find cool. I stopped begging for approval from the masses, I stopped going to Reddit to get "advice" from people who only seek to chastise me.
- simonswords82 5y ago
  Yep, same boat here. Deleted FB/Insta and avoiding altogether as it made me incredibly anxious. Still lurk on Reddit but no account there so I can't wade in to the comments. HN is the only forum I actively participate in.
- durovo 5y ago
  And now you hang out at HN which is totally different from social media. Where people never seek approval from the masses. Chastising other people as a concept does not exist on HN. HN, the not-social media, does not even have a concept of likes.
  - drunkpotato 5y ago
    I realize you’re being sarcastic and that hacker news is a social media, however there is a difference in degree and what behaviors the site encourages. For me, personally, using HN and a very limited set of subreddits is an enjoyable waste of time, and doesn’t feel like an addiction. I would also credit HN as exposing me to technologies I might otherwise not have seen, and enriching my life in some small way. As for other social media, I deleted my Facebook and Twitter and feel like a mentally healthier person for it, and I think it’s a choice everyone has to make for themselves, but we should be providing information and support to people who quit. I would liken it more to alcohol use: many enjoy it in moderation, it’s an addictive problem for some. I strongly dislike the semi-compulsory nature of Facebook groups for activities that only organize on Facebook.

headmelted 5y ago

Or.. and hear me out here.. Just close your account completely? We’ve seen a great many of the people that built these systems come forward to explain that not only do they regret their role but that the harm being caused is worse than most people believe. I’ve also not seen or heard anyone (even people that currently work there) argue that these networks are in any way a net positive for society or the vast majority of participants. This should be a red flag to you as a user. Maybe we could do something similar to what goes on cigarette packs. BROWSING STAGED AND MANIPULATED PHOTOS ON SOCIAL MEDIA MAY BE HAZARDOUS TO YOUR MENTAL HEALTH.

Tenoke 5y ago
As a counterpoint I use Instagram maybe 2 hours a week total and get some minor value at little cost. I dont really see a benefit in closing my account.
- whatever_dude 5y ago
  Like anything, if you know how to moderate your experience and balance your time and energy, you can derive something positive getting it. Speaking from personal experience, my Twitter experience got much much better once I got diligent about adding muted words for anything political or the outrage du jour. The problem is that not everybody does, or want to do that. Teenagers, for example, are highly influenceable (sp?) but their peers, so they get controlled by social media rather than the other way around. Same with people following celebrities/influencers. It's easy to build a collective consciousness that people compare themselves too, to their loss.
moksly 5y ago
I get a lot of positive experiences an connections out of both Instagram and Facebook. I use them solely for hobby purposes though. I’m part or the largest Danish Blood Bowl 2 league and it’s all organised through Facebook. So is almost all our table top tournaments, and it’s really an wonderful community, even when you branch out into the warhammer general community in Denmark. I use Instagram solely for painting miniatures, finding inspiration, sharing experiences and connecting with other people to learn from or teach them tips and tricks. This is all very anecdotal of course, but I think SoMe is just what you use it for. I share your worry, but I wonder if we’d get rid of the pressurised competitive society without the platforms, or they just made that part of modern western society very easy to share. I do wonder why people post pictures of themselves, or why people look at them. I get that there are a lot of beautiful people on platforms like Instagram, but there are so many that you sort of expect them to drown each other out. I don’t get it at least, but for hobby and creative purposes, I do think these platforms are kind of great.

deergomoo 5y ago

Instagram can actually be a nice place, if used as a platform to look at cool pictures and not at all as a social network. I never added any friends or family, I just follow accounts and topics I'm interested in. So my feed is almost entirely pixel art, cool architecture, and retro console mods, and it's very pleasant. Considering they're Facebook-owned, I see surprisingly little effort to cram low-effort garbage down my throat. I've even bought a couple of things via ads, as they seem to be pretty aligned with my interests (as you would expect from that level of data collection). The only real issue I've had is that a weirdly large number of people seem to tag their family photos with the #architecture hashtag.

kuu 5y ago
> The only real issue I've had is that a weirdly large number of people seem to tag their family photos with the #architecture hashtag. Because for most people hasthags are a way of getting people to view their picture than to label the content
72deluxe 5y ago
When you run a Pi-Hole you see how much telemetry is being sent back with the DNS requests to many different domains. Insane, simply for scrolling through pictures. I think it tells you a lot.
- jreese 5y ago
  FWIW, most of what happens with the unique subdomains is done with the intention of automatically routing you to the nearest edge/pop that has the best chance of either having the asset cached, or in the best location for routing your request to a datacenter that can serve the asset from disk. By generating the seemingly random subdomains when serving the metadata to the client, it can most efficiently fetch the media to be displayed. It's entirely possible (likely?) that multiple users in the same ISP/location to be vended the same subdomain/url, but physically/topologically distant users will get different urls.
forinti 5y ago
Same here, I don't seek out anyone on Instagram. I follow accounts that interest me, such as Museums, Ministry of Culture, language teachers, etc. The Hermitage Museum, for example, posts excellent content.

RileyJames 5y ago

We’ve had likes on Instagram hidden in Australia, and maybe NZ for quite some time. Maybe it’s not everyone, but I know my account no longer shows likes on any posts. I was unaware it could be turned off. I don’t really use it much now anyway, but I did like this feature. It was one less metric to be distracted by, you either thought the photo was good, or bad, rather than agreed with others or not. I prefer to make a decision for myself and then see the general opinion. But my Instagram was 80% my friends, unlike some of my close friends who have horrible comparative relationships with people they don’t know on Instagram. And the likes analytics are big part of that. They have since stopped using it, but I feel removing likes counts is a factor in that decision. Instagram story rants are a whole different ball game...

samuelizdat 5y ago

It's not likes giving people anxiety, it's the gaze of the panopticon.

qwerty456127 5y ago

We should probably go the opposite way and increase it to absurd like don't stop running or don't eat until you get enough likes... /s

whywhywhywhy 5y ago

If they truly cared about users mental health FB/IG and Twitter would also add a switch in the options to hide all political discussion.

kylehotchkiss 5y ago
It's third party but I did almost exactly this with Tweetbot's mute feature. A lot of political topics can be summarized in a few buzzwords. Twitter tends to be much more focused on positivity and work topics since I've made this change.
- whywhywhywhy 5y ago
  You can do this on standard Twitter too, and I do. But it's a game of whack a mole, every few weeks theres another political hot topic that floods the timeline and I have to add another word to the blocklist which is now over 1000 words. What frustrates me is I know Twitter knows these topics are political, I know they could add a switch to hide it all but I also suspect they don't want to because they consider it important that I hear about what they consider important. America is not the world but the rest of the world is subjected constantly to events and outrage as if it is the whole world because the people running these platforms only have a very small perspective of what the world is.
mixmastamyk 5y ago
I did that manually last year by blocking all lowbrow sources (orgs and individuals) in the FB news feed.

hn8788 5y ago

It seems silly, but I think this could actually be helpful for some people. I have my upvotes hidden on reddit because I found myself regularly checking the site after I would post, just to see if the number of upvotes I received had increased. It's not like it was making me feel pressure or depressed if a post didn't get votes, but it felt the same way video games feel when you try to get a high score. Hiding the vote count made it so I don't get distracted by the feeling of wanting to see if my "score" is going up.

SamBam 5y ago
How do you do that? I see an option in my Reddit preferences to "make my votes public," but it doesn't seem like this hides votes on my own posts from me.
- skeletonjelly 5y ago
  Maybe a part of RES? https://redditenhancementsuite.com/ https://redditenhancementsuite.com/

subpixel 5y ago

To be clear, this is a _per post_ selection, that defaults to off. So, any potential impact here seems to be throttled, intentionally.

zelon88 5y ago

I must've been in the testing batch because in 2019 my Instagram simply stopped telling me how many people had liked my post and I could not for the life of me figure out how to fix that. I just checked and for the first time since I can remember I can see how many people like my posts again. I feel like a quick notification informing me that I was part of a study would have been appropriate.

Nagyman 5y ago
IIRC, it was a permanent change for everyone. This most recent change re-adds the ability to see counts.
- patorjk 5y ago
  I've always been able to see my like count. I've been waiting to see if it'd disappear, but it never did. I post regularly too.

cblconfederate 5y ago

This could be considered a landmark that marks the end of social manipulative media. Good riddance you won't be missed (Because hiding/unhiding will be the next social signaling)

geden 5y ago

Now we just need Spotify to hide play counts... These have a terrible effect on artists.

72deluxe 5y ago
Yes, and also need to hide the speedometer in cars because my mother-in-law drives incredibly slowly and being a passenger has a negative effect on my mental health. We also need to abolish the "top apps" features in the various app stores because my apps didn't sell well and it had a terrible effect on me. We also need to ensure that everyone in the Formula 1 finishes at the same time, holding hands, because the "losers" at the end didn't win and they felt bad.... Where does the madness end?? It turns out that life is unfair - who knew?!
- comfyinnernet 5y ago
  I thought I'd seen bad analogies before, but I had no idea what was possible.
  - 72deluxe 5y ago
    Haha thank you! That genuinely made me laugh haha You are right - they are terrible analogies, and I am proud of them.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

terminalserver 5y ago

“Cigarette companies allow smokers to choose not to smoke cigarettes”

defulmere 5y ago

Pixelfed (federated network similar to Instagram) made a similar move about a month ago: https://mastodon.social/@pixelfed/106161269947338845 https://mastodon.social/@pixelfed/106161269947338845 I missed the counts at first, but after a week or so I stopped noticing.

noisy_boy 5y ago

I am waiting this to be followed by "premium" tier for consumers that allows them to see "hidden" likes.

ChrisArchitect 5y ago

what I don't get about this is it seemed to me across multiple accounts that this has been in effect for a year maybe two! Gotten used to it, not news etc. I know, wasn't 'global' -- but when it's rolled out in major markets like US, Canada, probably a bunch of EU, Australia etc..... it's totally a normal thing by now. 2 years! previous discussion about the roll out: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21491648 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21491648

rchaud 5y ago

Remember all the way back to 2013 when FB switched to the algo-driven Timeline instead of the Facebook wall newsfeed? A lot of people hated that update, as it fundamentally changed the user experience of FB permanently. But not me. With Timeline, the wall post counter was no longer displayed on your profile. That had long been a source of embarrassment for me as so few people posted on my wall. It didn't matter IRL, but in college, you do feel that you're not doing something right if your page is so inactive compared to those of your peers. Was I really that uninteresting? It was a proxy measure of my relative social popularity, and it sucked, because I had no interest in juicing these numbers. So they stayed low for years until the metric was finally hidden from view.

MajorBee 5y ago

> Mr Mosseri said there had been a "polarised" reaction from creators - accounts which make money through brand partnerships and advertising on the platform - but that the new feature didn’t affect revenues. Considering how many people make a living directly or indirectly on Instagram and/or other social media platforms, I wonder what shape the opposition will take to these steadily growing measures of user "protection". I understand Instagram/Facebook, at the end of the day, will not take actions that will harm their expected growth or revenue, however, that does not mean influencers won't get shafted in some way.

saos 5y ago

This is an app I happily deleted years ago and life has been so good ever since

antirez 5y ago

It requires a very high amount of naiveness to think this could solve the issue. Only thing that will help is education of children, so that they understand their place in the world, to accept themselves, that the aesthetic standards provided in social networks are very high (but yet, as a central European my sensibility is a bit different than the one in other places -- I would suggest that this must be a stimulus to avoid gaining weight, to train, and so forth), that random appreciation in terms of "likes" is not a sensible measure of how much a person is worth, and so forth.

KittenInABox 5y ago
I doubt that the only thing that will help is education. Education cannot win over something where other, more educated people are putting full-time careers in psychological hijacking of children. A 12 year old doesn't stand a chance no matter how much they accept themselves. This stuff needs to be regulated like cigarettes.
- antirez 5y ago
  I don't agree because the contact with real teenagers at school and other places where children meet was as brutal as it is today even in the past. Now there are new elements, that is, the fact you have to confront yourself with a lager audience of people and you can see unreal standards. But even at school with 400 children there will be the extremely pretty, the extremely good at sports, and so forth. And what is likes in social networks, in the real world translates to certain folks getting all the attention and other being regarded as trash. I think that certain problems that are embedded in being humans in a modern society are now all attributed to social networks, but this is not the case. Similarly people already used to vote for crazy folks: we in Italy had Berlusconi in '90s. Before there was Hitler and Mussolini. Similarly to think that US got Trump because social networks is a simplification that fails to capture reality.
  - lupire 5y ago
    School bullying is bad, but scaling it up to global bullying is worse.

homedepotdave 5y ago

They would need to make this the default if they want it to work at all.

nipponese 5y ago

Just add parental controls: No like count, no comments, no @ mentions. The kids can still express themselves creatively and they can't be bullied through features.

Haunted_Cabbage 5y ago

Sprout Social - Please ignore.

hdsmsk 5y ago

Will Instagram allow users to hide the explore/reels pages which are algorithmically designed to be addicting?

Rabei 5y ago

Any product/platform where the relevant metric to value your interaction with it is engagement has all the incentives to become harmful for you as end user. We should realize this, and move accordingly, does not matter how much we try to regulate it the incentives always end as harmful.

crossroadsguy 5y ago

It was mostly the lack of any usefulness. But one of the other major reasons I deleted my Facebook years ago was that I used to feel disappointed when one of my posts had less comments or likes. I knew it was time to delete that social network. Children and teenagers could have life altering effects due to constant exposure to such experiences on these sites.

nacho2sweet 5y ago

They had disabled showing likes here in Canada for a couple of years it seemed like then I got a message when I opened the app "would you like to see like totals?". Anyways the app is almost completely unusable now with the amount of ads it shows.

Strs2FillMyDrms 5y ago

This wont change anything. Social media has made the entirety of humanity aware that civilization has been built on its entirety by a discriminatory principle, in all aspects, and all of them can be traced back to a genetic discrimination. When this is positioned against humans attempt at transcending nature (with laws, politics and science) it becomes a matter of choice. At the degree that our species is able to choose their sexual partners, the genetic "gap" of what we deem attractive will accelerate the same way dog breeds had been "evolving" since it became popular to breed them, which is just a couple hundred years.

halsom 5y ago
The division most significant to Instagram is social class, not “discrimination.”
- Strs2FillMyDrms 5y ago
  I am using the word discrimination in a general sense. It's not *just* the color or race of someone's skin, but also a lot other factors. If we trace back the repeating attributes of social class and wealth they all tend to gravitate to similar genetical discriminations (from wikipedia: "ability to distinguish one thing from another.") And once the discrimination crosses the ingroup barrier, then the measure keeps "ranking" them among the different outgroups. Before the internet the ingroups were not measured against outgroups as much.

freewizard 5y ago

It’s definitely a progress for Instagram but probably a little one if the algorithm sorting is not changed. For those who may need, there have been browser addons for Twitter and Facebook to do the same. [1] Also worth noting Mastodon has this demetricator feature built in since quite a while ago. [1] https://github.com/bengrosser https://github.com/bengrosser

notjes 5y ago

Hiding CNN, MSNBC, NYT from all citizens would increase the mental health, and physical health, of all citizens A LOT.

SQueeeeeL 5y ago
I always enjoy people who think newspapers are on par with television which is literally on 24/7 and is extremely loud. Like, I don't know anyone who reads the NYTs, but I have boat load of aunts and uncles who just leave cable news running all the time

neolog 5y ago

Dang, Why is there a total upvote count for users? I think it makes me focus excessively on social status -- after all, it's right next to my name. What would you think about removing it?

eganist 5y ago
I'd be quite content with the option of hiding mine. There's zero programmatic value to me or any other HN readers (we don't have sub-HNs we have to moderate ourselves), and I tend to determine credibility by reviewing a person's past submissions and comments rather than gleaning a simple score. For what little that's worth.

spoonjim 5y ago

This is akin to the ability to "de-badge" a car, offered by German manufacturers, where the manufacturer logo is visible but the specific model is not. I.e. a Mercedes SL could be a $80,000 V6 or a $160,000 twin-turbo V12 and unless someone was clued into the differences (like the exhaust pipes) they wouldn't know. I've noticed anecdotally that in the US, most of the de-badged cars are the low end models -- people don't want to be known as driving the cheapest end of the range. In Northern Europe, the de-badged cars are generally the highest end models. Wonder if there's a deeper learning to be found there.

bschne 5y ago
Funny, I always thought people did that for aesthetic reasons because they liked the cleaner look.
- pc86 5y ago
  That's certainly part of it, and if I was going to buy a car at the SL level I'd probably debadge regardless of the trim level. But I'm sure there are people on one end of the spectrum who don't want to advertise their $150-200k car, and people on the other end who want to make others think it's a $150-200k car.
alexanderchr 5y ago
> Wonder if there's a deeper learning to be found there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante
fy20 5y ago
The whole indirect signalling of cars is very interesting. In my country (North/Eastern Europe) you pay more (€500-€2000) for a license plate that has certain combinations of numbers such as 123 or 747. I've noticed that pretty much every Porsche has a plate like that. It's kind of silly, because people who have no clue that exists won't care at all. You can also go full on custom plates, the funniest I saw recently was someone who had H0DL... on a Toyota RAV4 :D I guess the plate cost 20% the price of the car. I used to live in a Middle Eastern country where the plates were simply Latin numbers, combinations didn't matter, but if you wanted a shorter plate you had to pay more. If you had a 1 or 2 character plate (which is at least $500k) supposedly girls would just leave their phone numbers on your car, regardless of what car you had.

nonbirithm 5y ago

It makes me think: why is a successful company which introduced a feature to supposedly improve the product beginning to consider it's better for some users to remove it instead? I think we will regret the day when we realize we've innovated and revolutionized technology to the point where it can overpower our minds. Humans seem to be really good at designing engagement traps when they have all the tools, look to the future and see all the possibilities before them. These people pay millions of dollars for you to choose their app over writing some words on paper, or going for a hike, or any other action you could take. Also, I don't think Instagram would offer the option to disable likes if they didn't believe it would ultimately help them retain more users.

annadane 5y ago

Cool! Now let us browse (and maybe give us a chronological feed?) without logging in maybe?

Tomminn 5y ago

How exactly does this mechanic work? If I hide likes on one of my posts, can no-one who views it see like count? Does this mean the liker's are also hidden? Or is the information about the number of likes just one more click away for the viewer or the post?

xg15 5y ago

Do I understand this correctly, that you can only make likes invisible to yourself? This seems about as useful as the "if you don't like it, just pretend it isn't there" school of moderation - namely not useful at all. Humans are social beings and acutely aware of status indicators. A like count is a status indicator, even if a stupid one. By hiding the count for everyone, the indicator would be removed, which I imagine could actually make some change. But if a user can only remove the count for themselves, fully knowing that everyone else is still seeing it, I don't see how anything more is archieved than putting thrm as a disadvantage and potentially causing even more anxiety.

tablespoon 5y ago
> Do I understand this correctly, that you can only make likes invisible to yourself? > This seems about as useful as the "if you don't like it, just pretend it isn't there" school of moderation - namely not useful at all. But a feature like that makes "pretending it isn't there" much, much easier. I know from experience: Metafilter has had a similar feature for at least a decade, and it does help lessen a lot of the negative psychological effects caused by "likes."

pessimizer 5y ago

Without likes people will have no idea if people are reading their posts other than comments, which are rare compared to low-effort "like" clicks. It's not going to work.

drannex 5y ago

This has always been one of my favorite features of Tumblr, the ability to hide your likes and who you follow. Not only that, but Tumblr doesn't show follower counts - something that is immensely useful (especially as someone who had over a million) and you can implement your own if you want. It gives you a concept of social privacy in at least the things that matter - your network. I hope Twitter follows suit.

elenaturner 5y ago

I though people like to show off the like count on insta...

hellothereworld 5y ago

Wow my mental health seems to have improved significantly since they added this feature!