US rapper Nicki Minaj is not too happy with Instagram’s latest feature and has vowed to stop using the app if they remove her likes.
Making the announcement on Twitter on Sunday, the Barbie Dreams hitmaker said she would stop posting on the app and asked her followers to recommend an alternative one.
“I’m not posting on IG after this week cuz they removing the likes. Hmmmm what should I get into now? Think of all the time I’ll have with my new life [sic],” she wrote.
Nicki went on to allege that the removal of likes was a plot between bigger companies and Instagram to make more money and prevent musicians from making money through the platform.
“They will replace that too. You’ll see. This isn’t about how smaller companies will cope. It’s about WHY the bigger company is doing it. This is why musicians make no money. The labels & streaming services knew what to say to pacify us. They continue to make the REAL MONEY,” she responded to a follower who questioned her decision.
According to News24, Insta’s decision to hide likes comes as an attempt to ease the pressure to win approval with images, videos or comments and rather let people focus on what was being posted.
Although likes will disappear from IG’s feeds and users’ profile pages, the user can still see the number of likes their posts received but their followers won’t.
Speaking at the WIRED25 conference in San Francisco recently, IG CEO Adam Mosseri said the feature had already been rolled out in several countries, including Canada, Brazil and New Zealand, and would be implemented in the US as early as next week.
Other people who have expressed their dissatisfaction with this new feature are influencers who, according to CNN, rely on branded content, product lines, podcasts, books and even their own online courses on how to build a social-media following to turn their popularity into a profit.
“The fact that my posts are massively engaged has paid off for me. My main concern right now is that the number of followers a user has now defaults to be the main metric," photography influencer Sam McAllister told the publication.
