Instagram and Facebook now offer the ability to hide 'likes', but what's the point of that?

Facebook and Instagram users now have two new options. They can remove the display of likes from their own posts, so that no one can see how many they’ve received. And they can also disable likes altogether, so that the user can no longer see them on posts at all.

But will it make any difference? If likes are like crack to validating teens and adults, what’s the point of self-regulation? Surely there must be something in it for Facebook itself?

“I suspect the reason they’re pulling back is that they’ve discovered that enough people have become overly sensitive to likes, to the point of fixation,” Eli Holder, founder of psychology and data-based design firm 3iap, told Lifewire via email. “When like counts completely replace your other reasons for sharing, other, more intrinsic motivations become less compelling.”