Instagram Rolling Out a Ban on Like Counts, Influencers Furious
It's becoming more difficult for people to make money off of Instagram.
If you are into social media, there is a good chance that you have felt a certain way based on your likes. Your entire mood shifted for the better or worse depending on how many likes you got on your latest post. I've known people who would delete a post if it failed to get less than 100 likes.
And then there are influencers.
These people literally get paid to post about different products and likes are a crucial part of that. Not only does a brand want to see that you have lots of followers, but likes and engagement are incredibly important. A brand doesn't want to waste money paying someone to post if it's not going to pay out in the long run.
Now Instagram is ruining all of that.
The social media platform has been rolling out a like count ban. Essentially, they are hiding the number of likes on each person's posts. Now, it looks like you will still be able to see how many likes you're getting on your own page, but you will not be able to see the number on the posts of your competitors friends. So far Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Italy, Japan, and Brazil are already under the ban.
The motivation behind this move is to remove pressure from the platform.
For many people, social media is intimidating. Somehow a platform designed to enable to us to tell a story and connect with one another has turned into a cut-throat competition. We're all reaching for a proverbial Homecoming queen crown. It's kind of sad when you think of it.
Let me just say that you should never base your worth on a number, be it likes, followers, age, square footage, money in the bank, etc.