Privacy is the name of the game at Elon Musk's X.
In one of the more drastic changes since Musk bought the social media platform, the “likes” tab is no more. X's engineering team issued a statement on Tuesday, explaining that “likes” are now private for everyone to “better protect” users’ privacy.
Anyone who used X on Wednesday was likely met with the following notification:
The team also outlined that some users are able “to see posts you have liked (but others cannot).” Additionally, users “will no longer see who liked someone else’s post,” while “a post’s author can see who liked its posts.” Finally, “like count and other metrics for your own posts will still show up under notifications.”
Musk quote-tweeted the statement on Wednesday, writing, “Important change: your likes are now private.”
The Tesla founder also responded to a post from The Verge about making “likes” private. “Important to allow people to like posts without getting attacked for doing so!” Musk wrote.
The change follows X’s updated guidelines regarding pornographic material. Earlier this month, the platform revealed that users can now share consensual adult content if it is marked as porn.
“Likes” were previously visible both on a person’s profile page, which chronicled every single liked tweet, and on an individual tweet.
Of course, the change isn’t sitting well with a lot of users, who used the feature to show love on the platform. On the other hand, the two updates together—the no “likes” tab and permitting consensual porn—allows others to finally thirst in private.
Check out some reactions from X users below.
