We can’t decide whether anonymizing likes on X is a good or bad thing. An in-appalert — made by tech mogul and X’s de facto boss Elon Musk — shocked X users worldwide when they discovered that they will no longer be able to see other users likes, or see another user's likes — a decision made to enhance privacy on the social media platform, according to The Washington Post.

So what happens now? Users will still be able to see who liked their posts, but other peoples’ likes will become a mystery. Want to revisit a post you enjoyed? Don’t worry, you can still access your likes tab on your profile.

The like feature has been the topic of contention. Even though the platform has not indicated why they’ve made this move, we surmise it might be on account of likes that can come back to haunt high-profile individuals within the growing ‘cancel culture’. US senator Ted Cruz ‘liked’ an explicit tweet from his official account in 2017, and eventually blamed it on a wayward staffer, but as we all know, the internet never forgets. Musk has fallen into that trap several times himself, causing users to predict ‘likes’ becoming private over a year ago.

Tags: