This week Elon announced that X/Twitter is granting a feature previously exclusive to premium members of hiding likes available to all users of the platform. 'Likes' were a feature of showing engagement to a post without it publicly appearing on your timeline or feed but users were able to see your 'liked' posts if they went into your profile.

Because of this semi-anonymity/ extra steps to view someone's liked posts, it became sort of private with many well regarded people liking posts that could be seen as out of character in nature to some and down bad to others. Previously instagram had a feature of seeing what your followers were liking before it was taken away.

What are your thoughts JA community? Do you think 'likes' should be private?

I don't think they should but it can make tailoring your algorithm more personalised and private by engaging in the posts anonymously whilst publicly showing what you want. However I don't think there is any user that didn't already know that your likes were public. I do think there are some social media accounts of brands that would like any mention of that brand as a form of tracking engagement and conversation but I don't think that liking something is necessarily advocating that message.
There are times a post blows up and being able to track a post via your likes is better than publicly showing you're following the drama so the 'likes' become a personal feed you can dip into without it overtaking your public feed.

EDIT 6-13-24
I completely forgot X has a bookmark option which basically can serve as a way of keeping track of threads without publicly supporting it. This essentially is a private 'like' allowing you to keep tabs on these things.
In my defence I rarely use the bookmark tab though I have seen when a particularly spicy post gets a lot of traction - commenters will note how many bookmarks the thread has