“We hope this test will remove the pressure of how many likes a post will receive, so you can focus on sharing the things you love” - Mia Garlick, Director of Policy for Facebook in Australia and New Zealand.”

Australia is now involved in Instagram’s ‘trial update’ designed to enhance user experience, enabling people to ‘focus less on likes and more on telling their story’, according to Director of Policy for Facebook in Australia and New Zealand, Mia Garlick.

Under this new design, Instagram users will no longer be able to view the number of likes for other people’s images. They can, however, still see the number of likes they receive on their own accounts.

This initiative follows the introduction of a similar Canadian campaign launched in May, with Australia being one of 6 countries scheduled to test out this change. Ireland, Italy, Brazil, Japan and New Zealand will also undergo these temporary design shifts.

The Australian community was selected as a prime candidate for this trial due to its impressive social media metrics, featuring high engagement and rapid growth amongst its tech-savvy audience.

Whilst this revision may require an adjustment for some users, officials say that it should not affect measurement tools for businesses and creators on Instagram.

‘The really important part’, explains Garlick, ‘is [that] the data is still there for influencer and business accounts, so they'll still be able to see their like count and have… all of their ad manager data’.

Meanwhile, Twitter has also launched a campaign in Canada, introducing a ‘Hide Replies’ feature. This option gives users the ability to filter out replies to their tweets that they don’t feel contribute to the thread.

‘We want everyone on Twitter to have healthy conversations, and we’re working on features that will help people feel more comfortable. We’re testing a way for people to hide replies they feel are irrelevant or offensive.’ - Twitter Support Team