Research Study: Impact of X/Twitter's Private Likes Policy on Engagement with High-Risk Content

Summary

This research article examines how X/Twitter's June 2024 policy change making likes private affected user engagement with high-reputational-risk content. The study used two complementary approaches: a Difference-in-Differences analysis of 154,122 posts from 1,068 accounts before and after the policy change, and a within-subject survey experiment with 203 X users. The findings show no detectable platform-level increase in likes for high-reputational-risk content, and while survey participants reported modest increases in willingness to like such content under private visibility, this didn't translate to significant changes in actual group-level behavior. The research suggests hiding likes produces limited behavioral response at the platform level, possibly due to gaps between user intention and behavior or engagement driven by high-usage/automated accounts.