X, formally Twitter will be making its users' likes private and at the same time it will remove the likes tab from the profile page. This feature was originally part of the X Premium plan but now the company has decided everyone will be able to hide their likes. This news was uncovered by a MacRumors contrubter earlier this week and then shortly afterwards, Haofei Wang, Director of Engineering at X confirmed the change.
"Yeah, we are making likes private. Public likes are incentivizing the wrong behavior. For example, many people feel discouraged from liking content that might be "edgy" in fear of retaliation from trolls, or to protect their public image."
Haofei Wang
It isn't clear just yet when X will be rolling out this change, but some extra details were confirmed from another X engineer. Enrique Barragan said that users will be able to see who have liked their posts, it is just the wider public user base won't be able to. Like counts on posts and replies are also staying.
