You’ll soon be able to like controversial and weird posts including those porn posts on X with no fear of being outed when people check your Likes tab on the social media platform.

X is planning to hide likes for all users by default so you won’t need to get an X premium subscription to do so. X is removing the option to view public likes so you won’t be able to keep up with whatever people are liking when you go to their Likes tab.

Celebrities and public figures including X’s owner, Elon Musk have been “caught in 4K” liking controversial content that has pushed them to scandals. “Yeah, we are making likes private. Public likes are incentivizing the wrong behaviour. 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,” reads a post by Wang, director of engineering at X.

It is worth noting that you will be able to see who likes your post and the number of likes a post gets. What you will not be able to see will be the Liked tab and who liked someone else’s post.

To hide your likes, people use the bookmark button to keep their likes private so this option by default will be handy. A poster can however decide to out someone’s likes if they wanted to.

The post riled up the platform with people reacting to this post.

what’s the difference between a “like” and a “bookmark” then?

”like”/❤️ was originally a ⭐️. we should have never moved away from that.

— jack (@jack) May 22, 2024

The author can see who liked their posts vs they cannot see who bookmarked it

Agree on the star, i liked it

— Enrique (@enriquebrgn) May 22, 2024

The number of likes visible is a great indicator on whether something is worth reading or watching.

I thought X was trying to encourage more engagement. You are taking away the critical signals of engagement and high quality content.

— Wall Street Silver (@WallStreetSilv) May 22, 2024

Like is visible between you and the author, the author will be notified, but not anyone else. Bookmark is only visible to you.

We could make it a ⭐️, or even make it customizable for users.

— Haofei (@wanghaofei) May 22, 2024

lol now bots are going to be harder to track. good job. 🙃

— luna (@ImLunaHey) May 22, 2024

I go to the likes tab of people I respect to find excellent content I might not have seen otherwise. Maybe the option to turn off likes is optimal?

— The Redheaded libertarian (@TRHLofficial) May 22, 2024