There are a lot of responsibilities on social media giants such as Instagram in this current pandemic as we have seen in the past that social media sites like Instagram are not only capable of helping people interact and share their thoughts and experiences but are also capable of swaying public opinion based on what is popular on their feed.
As such, Instagram has decided to avail the option to its users that allows them to turn off likes and dislikes entirely or keep things the way they used to be.
THE REASON
This, according to a Facebook spokesperson “is to understand if it lessens some pressure” on its users.
FREEDOM OF CHOICE
Not disabling this option entirely seems to be a wise choice on Instagram’s part as a few users are curious about what things are trending or famous on these social media platforms, this demographic also includes influencers who proactively want to communicate with brands and advertisers.
So, if the like and dislike option was not entirely available to the influencers, they will not have any metric to quantify the brand’s and advertiser’s individual values.
As a result of this, they might not be able to influence people towards these parties as effectively as before, translating directly into poor earnings.
A NEW APPROACH
The overall impact of this is expected to be a positive one as a Facebook company spokesperson said “We are testing this on Instagram as a start, but we are also exploring similar options for Facebook”.
This option gives more power in the hands of the users on how they choose to manage their own interaction with the platform, this option may be iterated upon further by Instagram, Facebook, and other similar platforms, so keep an eye out for these.
