So Adam Mosseri tweeted that next week they will hide likes and video views counts .
Heads up! We’ve been testing making likes private on Instagram in a number of countries this year. We’re expanding those tests to include a small portion of people in the US next week. Looking forward to the feedback!
https://twitter.com/mosseri/status/1192984329091043328
Really would like to hear the community as to how do you think this will affect influences, account sales and everything in Instagram.
They ran this in other countries a few months ago, I will need to research it on how it went. I guess if they’re still testing, they’re happy with the results so far.
Lol. So now if you’ll have 100k fake followers on insta, you’ll be getting brand deals and they’ll never know your real engagement as you can fake the screenshots.
well you can still see comments, so comments game is the going be super important now
Thats seems pretty wow where you can hire people to comment on ur posts. They are opening a way for an Another service which iam pretty solid in 
comments are super easy to fake as well.
Engagement lads. Its all about engagement. They know this and so does anyone worth there salt here. Who doesnt know how to spoof most of these metrics? So I ask you…how do you make this new reality a game changer for all of those who want to fake it? Personally Im glad its happening. So much weight is put on likes, follows etc. How will you gauge a pages value in light of this change?
I am kind of interested to see if this will work for them. This could also throttle down the number of scams, as fishing out for potential victims won’t be as easy any more.
They’re definitely doing this as a test to see if users will post content more frequently, as I’m sure posting content for the average user has gone down due to fear of not getting a lot of likes. They’re definitely worried about their user market share of the younger generation with apps like Snapchat that are more engaging because everything disappears. Definitely a smart move by Instagram.
Instagram does not want to hurt influencers - having IG celebrities is part of what makes the app so appealing/addicting for many of it’s users so I don’t think there’s anything to worry about if you have a bigger account. In terms of doing deals with brands, you’ll probably just have to either use a 3rd party tool to count the ‘likes’ or brands will just ask you to share your stats.
“If you have a bigger account.” That’s the thing it looks like new influencers will have a hard time growing their account. Everyone judges content on likes and video views including myself, but lets see IG’s experiments on human behaviour. 
This is Instagram.
And as much as I’d like to think they are doing this for the greater good - its just not easy to swallow that for some reason. There must be a much more calculated and a more profit-driven reasoning behind this.
I don’t think this has much to do with people’s self esteem. IG wouldn’t make such a big move just to focus on mental health of the audiences. IG / FB combined have a lot more dirt to worry about than to care for people’s mental health. From clearing out accounts dealing with illegal trades to cracking down on fake news propagators - there is simply much too much for FB to deal with should it decide to ‘care’ about the people. Removing likes should be the least of their concerns.
And its a way too risky move for IG (when a lot other apps are quickly rising up ex: TikTok)
Here is the thing - its always all about money. Nothing is more important than to make money and to keep the investors happy. Here is my take on this and I may be reaching a bit on this but …
A ton of money gets made by Instagrammers by simply being and influencing on the platform. I’m talking about the money made by influencers. Its a multi-billion dollar rotation of which IG makes nothing. Hmmm. Here is a thought. What can we do to make it harder for brands to gauge influencers’ true influence?
STEP 1 - Gradually pull back the natural organic reach on the platform = DONE! There are many studies that show how the natural organic reach on these platforms have continuously been going down thus pushing people to pay for ads.
STEP 2 - Take down the core metrics used to gauge a profiles health (likes & followers) = On-Going!
STEP 3 - See the change in the direction money floats. Instead of it going from brands to influencers. It shall go from brands to Instagram. Thats billions and billions of dollars that moves from brands to influencers and IG will finally see a cut.
I think I did read about this new feature where brands can partner with an influencer to create content on IG whilst having access to ‘promote’ the post of the influencer.
In other words -
With influencers being in over supply it wouldn’t be way too easy to find ones that are okay with above setup.
In the end, always follow the money.
The thing you’re talking about is live already. It’s called Brands Collab Manager. Afaik, its only for FB right now but as FB’s platforms keep merging the services, you can assume it’s done also for IG.
At the end of the day no matter what they did it always boosted their revenue, so that’s right, every change is calculated in $.
They have had likes hidden in Canada and Australia for a while now… most influencers and average users like it alot. They changed it back to showing likes in Canada and people complained so they hid them again.
You can still see likes in the web browser version of Instagram anywhere in the world, so if you need evidence of likes you can look up a post on the PC or on the webapp on your phone.
We’re already totally addicted to phones to the point that they are an extension of our minds. They will be recognized as such soon. The genie is out of the bottle. I see no point in making Instagram less intoxicating. It’s like removing some sound effects from a casino in Las Vegas. Pointless. Addicts will continue as usual.
Brands will ask to be tagged with the Brand tagging thing so they can see the insights.
I wasnt aware of that. Thats actually great.
Has Instagram implemented this yet?
