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Veteran users of Instagram might remember a tab that let you see posts that those you followed had been liking.
Pretty awkward if they didn’t realise and had been steadily liking along a feed of bikini pics (or maybe they did know?), and ultimately, the feature got killed off for being a stalker’s dream.
Now though, something similar is back again, with the ability to easily see Reels your friends have liked.
Instagram said that soon there would be a specific feed for these Reels, with only a ‘handful’ of countries getting it to start with but ‘more to come soon’.
Perhaps you have already have noticed a little icon at the bottom left of reels your friends have liked, showing a heart and their profile icon?
The aim is to make Instagram more social, but the move has annoyed a lot of users and could prove even more controversial than when they scrapped squares as the default post size.
Putting it simply, one user just wrote: ‘Oh this is gonna end a lot of relationships’.
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Instagram boss Adam Mosseri said the app would be ‘bringing your friends to the Reels tab’.
Explaining the controversial move, he said: ‘We want Instagram to not only be a place where you consume entertaining content, but one where you connect over that content with friends.
‘Now, when you go to the Reels tab, you’ll see a dedicated feed of reels your friends have liked or added a note to in the top right and start a conversation with them right there.
‘We’re rolling this out in a handful of countries to start, more to come soon.’
Is this a feature you needed or wanted?
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Yes
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No
Comments underneath his video were overwhelmingly negative, with one typical response saying: ‘This feels kind of intrusive and honestly unwanted. People are being so clear about what they want from this app and no one ever listens.’
Another wrote: ‘So, stop liking reels so people stay out my business. Got it.’
The move goes in the opposite direction to X, which previously had a tab where you could see posts liked by a user, which was deleted last summer.
Now, you can’t even see who liked a post at all, unless you are the original poster.
The idea was to encourgage engagement by making users feel freer to like content even if it is polarising.
Adam Mosseri said he was bringing in the changes to make Instagram feel more a ‘participatory’ experience than a ‘lean back’ one.
He said he’s hoping the kind of connection brought by seeing likes more prominently will be people chatting about comedians or architecture.
But do keep the new changes in mind, in case they’re more likely to inspire some awkward conversations.
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