Why did Elon Musk turn likes private on X?

X turned all users likes private on Tuesday in a move being described by the X engineering team to “better protect your privacy”.

The announcement on X, has 34 thousand quote tweets and 12 thousand comments primarily by users expressing their dissatisfaction at the move. X Owner Elon Musk has reneged on policy in the past. Shortly after his takeover, he notably implemented a policy that banned users from sharing links to other social media competitors. He walked back the policy after enough pushback was brought.

At this point, it’s unclear what the effect of this new policy will be.