Since taking over Twitter (now X) last year, Elon Musk has ushered in a series of changes to the social media platform, both drastic and subtle. His latest planned reform revealed in a tweet on Wednesday night, is to remove the visible counts of how many “likes” and retweets individual posts have amassed when they appear in users’ timelines.

“That is definitely happening,” Musk stated definitively in response to a user’s post about the potential change. “Just view count, as proxy for the other metrics, will show on the timeline.“

The billionaire entrepreneur did not delve into the reasoning behind the decision, but his terse comments suggested a desire to declutter the X/Twitter experience and shift focus away from engagement metrics like likes and retweets. Instead, the plan appears to be emphasizing overall impression counts — a metric that Musk has made publicly visible for all tweets since his $44 billion acquisition of the company.

While the specific user experience ramifications are still unknown, one possibility is that users scrolling through their “For You” and “Following” feeds will only see a post’s total view count. The existing like and retweet tallies may still be accessible by clicking into individual tweets, but they would be hidden from the primary timeline views.

The response from X/Twitter’s user base has been mixed so far. An unofficial poll with over 8,000 votes at the time of writing showed 88% of respondents opposed to hiding like and retweet counts, with only around 12% in favor of the move. However, at least one X/Twitter employee responded positively, commenting “Feels like we’re growing up” in relation to Musk’s announcement.

Musk’s proposed change is part of a broader trend across social media platforms to deemphasize publicly visible engagement metrics. Industry leaders like Instagram, Facebook, and most recently Meta‘s Threads have all implemented features allowing users to manually hide like and share counts on their own posts.

The rationale often cited is an effort to reduce the negative impacts of social media on mental health and self-esteem. Proponents argue that obsessing over like counts can be unhealthy, particularly for younger users. Some platforms like YouTube have also chosen to hide dislike counts site-wide in an attempt to cut down on harassment and toxicity.

Regardless of the motivation, Musk’s latest move continues his overhaul of what was once a relatively staid user experience on Twitter. Since his acquisition, the platform has rebranded as “X Corp.,” seen the addition of features like encrypted direct messages and faced widespread layoffs and employee upheaval.