Canada has an odd place in Instagram history: it was the first country where the platform publicly tested hiding like counts.
That 2019 experiment was not just a wellbeing story. It exposed how much brands, creators and users had come to treat one public number as a shortcut for quality.
What Happened in Canada?
In April 2019 Instagram began testing a feed in Canada where other people’s total like counts were hidden. TechCrunch reported at the time that creators could still see engagement on their own posts, but viewers no longer saw the public total. The company said it wanted people to focus on the content rather than the number of likes. The original Canada test coverage remains a useful snapshot of the experiment.
The test later expanded internationally. In 2021 Meta announced that Instagram users would be given the option to hide public like counts, rather than making the experience universal.
Likes Were Never the Same Thing as Business Value
A post can receive many likes and generate no useful action. Another can attract modest visible engagement while bringing website visits, enquiries, saves or purchases.
For a creative small business, define the job of the post before judging the metric:
- Is it meant to reach new people?
- Explain a service?
- Drive a click?
- Show process or credibility?
- Encourage saves or shares?
The right metric depends on the answer.
Our small-business branding guide begins with the same idea: the communication needs a purpose before the visual layer can be judged.
Public Metrics Create Social Proof
Visible like counts can influence perception before somebody has properly evaluated the content. A post with 20,000 likes feels socially validated in a way the identical post with 20 likes may not.
That can create herd effects and social comparison. Research on adolescents found that experimentally receiving fewer likes than peers could produce greater feelings of rejection and negative affect; the study is available through the US National Library of Medicine’s PubMed Central archive.
More recent research continues to examine the relationship between quantified feedback, self-esteem and social comparison, while also showing that outcomes depend heavily on the person and context.
Removing the Number Does Not Remove the Algorithm
One misconception around the original hidden-like experiment was that likes stopped mattering. They did not. Hiding a public number changes what users see; it does not necessarily remove engagement signals from ranking systems.
That distinction matters for brands. Do not confuse an interface choice with the underlying distribution system.
Creative Quality Still Needs a System
If a brand stops designing for visible likes, what replaces them?
Start with visual consistency and usefulness. Our brand moodboard guide can help define the image world, while the Brand Direction Builder connects that aesthetic to audience, voice and personality.
Measure What Happens After Attention
For business content, ask what people did next. Did they visit the profile, save the post, share it, click through, join the mailing list or contact the business?
A like is easy to understand precisely because it is shallow. Deeper behaviour is often more useful but requires more interpretation.
That was one of the interesting consequences of the Canada test: it forced creators and marketers to imagine Instagram without an instantly visible scoreboard.
Do Not Design Your Brand Around Platform Fashion
Instagram changes formats, interfaces and distribution priorities. A brand identity should be able to survive those changes.
Our guide to building a cohesive visual style focuses on choices that can travel across a website, email, print and social platforms.
Likewise, our Pinterest guide on growing visual discovery traffic is useful precisely because it treats the platform as one distribution channel rather than the identity itself.
What Canada’s Experiment Still Teaches Brands
The hidden-like test did not prove that metrics are bad. It showed that the visibility of a metric changes behaviour.
For a creative business, the sensible response is to keep public popularity in proportion. Use platform metrics as signals, not as a verdict on the quality of the work or the value of the brand.
Meta’s own 2019 F8 announcement provides the broader context in which Instagram was experimenting with shopping, fundraising and platform experience at the same time.