Elon Musk’s decision to privatize likes on X has made the platform worse

Spend enough time on X, the app formerly Twitter, and you’re bound to get a questionable reply. It happens all the time. You see a tweet, and the context is lost. Are they kidding? Are they in on the joke you just made? Are they being funny or, for lack of a better word, an asshole? In short, you’re left wondering: What do I make of this?

There used to be a hack for this problem: checking their Twitter Likes. Yet, in June, X made everyone’s Likes private, which seemed like a relatively mild and benign change by Muskian standards. In reality, it’s made the site considerably worse.

Twitter Likes were the most efficient and effective way to see a person’s online soul. Within a moment’s scroll, you understood the context of what someone was about. You could navigate to the Likes tab on a profile, and if they liked a bunch of posts from other people being, well, assholes — congrats, you encountered an asshole. You could move along. Conversely, if the person liked good posts, you could safely assume they were making a joke at the expense of the assholes.

Privatizing Likes, like privatizing most anything, benefited the few at the expense of the public good. Elon Musk admitted the move was made to protect people from being “attacked” online for liking posts. However, it seems more like he’s providing cover for the thin-skinned edgelords who want to like hurtful and offensive things without consequences. Musk himself is the poster boy and god-like figure of right-wing edgelords — do you think he wants his Likes public? Public Likes offered thin protection, but it was at least a tool to inspire better behavior online. You’d have to wonder: “Do I want people to see I liked this?”

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Likes symbolized passive appreciation and, thus, were a tool to see what someone enjoyed. And to be clear, I wasn’t trawling through Likes to go after someone. It was a quick guide to know if I should ignore them or engage. Or, if an account followed me — I could see their Likes, along with their posts, and decide if they were a worthwhile follow. And in a more positive angle, public Likes were also a fantastic way to find good posts. I used to round up the best tweets of the week for Mashable, and scrolling through funny people’s Likes was the best method for finding quality content. Many coworkers did similar.

Some smart people, including colleagues and great writers at other websites, have praised Likes going private because it frees you to like whatever you want and reduces the chance of embarrassment (and, in the worst cases, actual harassment) online.

But here’s the thing: If privacy was the goal, there was already a solution. In 2018, Twitter introduced bookmarks. If you wanted to save something for later, mark something you disagreed with, or keep track of your favorite adult content, the bookmark tool has always been there. And it’s private. So, now X is just providing cover for people to like offensive or hurtful stuff. It’s a tool for the worst people to boost the worst content you see on the platform. Liking used to mean something. Now, it’s just a number.

And think of all the stories we’d have been robbed of if public Likes never existed. We’d never see Jason Sudeikis liking all the posts from people who hated Ted Lasso. We’d never have known that Donald Trump liked this quite odd 2013 tweet from a random guy posing in his house, yelling online about convicted murderer Jodi Arias. And, most importantly, without public Likes, we’d never have seen Ted Cruz’s account liking porn from the aptly named account @SexuallPosts.

The website formerly known as Twitter was once a platform for people to show their taste, an absolute must-visit to see the funniest and most important things happening online. Privatizing Likes isn’t the worst thing Musk has done to degrade the experience on X (there’s plenty of that to go around), but it sure hasn’t made things better — only more boring.