Now one can like somebody’s Insta Story without sending them a DM because Instagram is rolling out a new feature it calls Private Story Likes.
Instagram head Adam Mosseri said that now, as you go through Stories, between sending a message and that little paper airplane, there will be a heart icon.
Mosseri further added, “And if you tap on it, it’ll send the author of that story alike, and that like will show up in the viewer sheet, not in your DM thread with them.”
It is also important to note that now Stories will not have like counts, and you will not see a public count for likes on Stories.
According to Mosseri, the idea here is to make sure that people can express more support for each other, but also clean up DMs a little bit.