Instagram is showing your friends which Reels you’ve liked
I come to you bearing bad news: Instagram is showing your friends which Reels you've liked.
It might encourage more engagement on Instagram Reels, but at what personal cost to us all?
At the top right of the Reels, you might see some of your friends' profile photos with little hearts in the corner of their images. Click that, and you'll be taken to the "With friends" tab. Each video will show you which of your friends liked the video, with your friend's image and a heart overlaid on the image in the bottom right.
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This new feature is intended to get you to stay on the app longer and encourage you to comment, like, and share Reels with your friends like you might with TikTok. And it's not the only effort Instagram is making to keep TikTok users on the app while TikTok is off the app stores (but still working on desktop and your phone if you have it downloaded already). The platform is reportedly paying influencers thousands of dollars to post on Reels before posting on TikTok. It replaced its classic square grids with rectangles to prioritize Reels; released a new video editing tool called Edits, much like TikTok's CapCup; and extended the maximum length of Reels to three minutes.
You can find out which Reels you've been inadvertently sharing with your friends by following a few steps.
Navigate to your profile and click the menu icon in the top right. Select "Your Activity," then select "Likes." This will show all of the posts and Reels you've liked. To only see the Reels you've liked, click the "All content types" dropdown and filter by Reels,
Christianna Silva is a senior culture reporter covering social platforms and the creator economy, with a focus on the intersection of social media, politics, and the economic systems that govern us. Since joining Mashable in 2021, they have reported extensively on meme creators, content moderation, and the nature of online creation under capitalism.
Before joining Mashable, they worked as an editor at NPR and MTV News, a reporter at Teen Vogue and VICE News, and as a stablehand at a mini-horse farm. You can follow her on Bluesky @christiannaj.bsky.social and Instagram @christianna_j.
