X confirms plan to make 'Likes' private and remove 'Likes' tab from profiles

Social media platform X (formerly Twitter) will soon stop displaying public “likes” on users' profile pages, the company announced. The plan was confirmed by X engineers on Wednesday after MacRumors Contributor Aaron Perris spotted a flag in X's iOS app indicating the upcoming change.

Perris found that disabling the flag completely removes the Likes tab from all user profiles. His discovery was shared on X, where it was then reposted and subsequently confirmed by X engineers.

“Yes, we make likes private,” replied Haofei Wang, technical director at X. “Public likes encourage the wrong behavior. For example, many people are afraid to like content that might be 'extravagant' because they fear reprisals from trolls or want to protect their public image.”

“Soon you'll be able to like posts without worrying about who might see them,” Wang continued. “Also a reminder that the more posts you like, the better your 'For You' algorithm gets,” he added.

To clear up any confusion among users, X's lead software engineer Enrique Barragan also responded with a post explaining that users will still be able to see who liked their posts, as well as the number of likes on all posts, replies, etc. The change includes hiding which posts other people have liked, which means removing the Likes tab on public profiles.

X Premium subscribers could optionally hide the “likes” tab on their profile, but the platform will soon remove it altogether. It's not yet clear when the change will roll out, but once it does, anyone on X, including owner Musk – who has faced criticism in the past for liking controversial posts – will be able to like whatever they want without it being made public.