[bartcobain]

The thing with this suggestion is that ATM Instagram is trying to fix how people are getting addicted to the Instagram popularity contest and instant feedback from the likes. Recently said that is testing the possibility to hide the like count. This suggestion IMO is another kind of feature for that popularity contest to be on the Famous side of the app.

https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/30/instagram-hidden-like-coun...

[josefrichter]

Interesting to see IG running tests on seemingly counterintuitive features like that. The addiction and instant gratification is what generates their profits, after all. That's why I also believe the feature I envisioned wouldn't match their business interests - they basically want your friends' content to be mixed with all the other content, including paid posts.. But "ethical design" is becoming a big topic, so maybe we will see changes like this.