Product design question

What data points or metrics might have made the Product team at Instagram to hide the number of likes from posts for viewers and show it only for creators?

Practice this question out loud. An AI interviewer asks it, follows up like a real interviewer would, and scores your answer. Type or speak.

What this question tests

Ability to reason backward from a real product decision to the data and metrics that likely justified it.

State the likely goal behind hiding public like counts: reducing social comparison pressure and encouraging more authentic posting, especially among younger users.
Consider data points that could have driven this: research or surveys showing anxiety correlated with like counts, especially in teens.
Consider behavioral metrics: posting hesitancy or deletion rate correlated with low like counts, suggesting fear of low engagement suppressed posting.
Consider a controlled experiment: an A/B test hiding likes in a test market (Instagram piloted this in several countries) and measuring posting frequency and wellbeing survey results.
Weigh the trade-off the team likely considered: potential reduction in engagement-driven behavior (fewer people obsessively checking likes) against the loss of virality signal for creators.

Grounds the answer in the real, known context that Instagram actually tested this via regional pilots before wider rollout.
Names posting hesitancy or deletion rate as a plausible internal metric linked to like-count anxiety.
Gives an illustrative finding, e.g. a pilot market showing a 10% increase in posting frequency after hiding likes, marked as an assumption.
Flags the real trade-off for creators, who rely on visible like counts as a status and discovery signal.

Answering purely with opinion about mental health with no attempt to name concrete data or metrics.
Ignoring the creator-side trade-off, which was a genuine business tension in this real decision.

Chapters of the AI PM course that teach what this question tests.