If there was a list of “Apps of the decade” Instagram would come in it. It is the most popular photo and video sharing platform for all operating systems. Celebrities can share their photos with fans on Instagram. The Facebook-owned application has made so many influencers, they share photos and videos for promotions and it is a medium for them to earn. The more they have followers and likes the more they get paid. But for a few years, people have been using bots (fake comments and likes) to become famous and promote.
A 2017 research by Sway Ops, an online anti-fraud company, suggested that a single day’s worth of posts tagged sponsored or ad on Instagram contained over 50 percent fake engagements and out of 118,007 comments, only 20,942 were not made by bot followers. To stop this, Instagram has been working on hiding the total number of likes. The company is currently hiding likes on posts in Canada, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Brazil, Australia, and New Zealand as part of its expanding test to not put a number of likes on a post. Now Instagram is beginning this test in the USA.
Instagram CEO, Adam Mosseri has confirmed on twitter that like counts will disappear for some users in the US starting next week. Mosseri tweeted “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!“