Instagram is going to hide likes in the US next

Instagram has been testing the ability to hide ‘likes’ from the picture-sharing platform, and those tests appear to have been successful. The platform has announced it is expanding its trial to the United States.

"Heads up! We've been testing making likes private on Instagram in several countries this year," Mosseri said in a tweet.

"We're expanding those tests to include a small portion of people in the US next week."

Facebook has been testing the ability to hide the number of ‘likes’ racked up by posts for a while now, but this marks the first time the service will be trialled in the US.

The idea behind it is to relieve the pressure of those putting content online, and instead get people to focus on what is in the posts, as opposed to what people think of it.

Instagram announced it was testing the idea behind hiding likes and video views in more than half a dozen countries. While account holders can still see the number of likes and comments, the real number is hidden from others.

Twitter also experimented with hiding numbers of re-tweets; however it decided people engaged less with tweets when they could not see numbers.

According to Twitter product lead Kayvon Beykpour, "When you remove engagement indicators, people engage less."