Soon, you may not be able to like tweets by clicking a heart icon. The Telegraph reports that Twitter has weighed the possibility of abandoning this feature. And since Twitter doesn’t actually have all that many features, it caught our attention.
The story claims, rather vaguely, that Twitter may remove the ability to click like on a tweet, a revelation that came from CEO Jack Dorsey, who admitted he’s not a fan of the heart-shaped icon when he spoke at the WIRED25 summit. “We have a big like button with a heart on it and we’re incentivizing people to want it to go up,” Dorsey said. “Is that the right thing? Versus contributing to the public conversation or a healthy conversation? How do we incentivize healthy conversation?” He also reportedly said that the social media site would be getting rid of it “soon.”
After the Telegraph‘s story broke, in an unexpected turn of events, Twitter responded to the story–and didn’t deny it. It wrote–in a tweet, natch–“As we’ve been saying for a while, we are rethinking everything about the service to ensure we are incentivizing healthy conversation, that includes the like button. We are in the early stages of the work and have no plans to share right now.”
As we've been saying for a while, we are rethinking everything about the service to ensure we are incentivizing healthy conversation, that includes the like button. We are in the early stages of the work and have no plans to share right now. https://t.co/k5uPe5j4CW
— Twitter Comms (@TwitterComms) October 29, 2018
While the Telegraph seems to imply that the ability to like tweets would disappear, based on Twitter’s response, it seems safer to assume that the heart-shaped button will disappear, and perhaps be replaced by something more to Dorsey’s liking. Since Twitter already added the hearts to replace the stars that people used to bookmark tweets, perhaps they will be moving to Horseshoes, Clovers, Blue Moons, or whatever other Lucky Charms marshmallow shape will foment kindness and “incentivize healthy conversation.”
Needless to say, Twitter users are not impressed with Twitter’s latest effort to make the site a kinder, gentler place:
Users: hey can you get rid of the Nazis please
Twitter: ok sure, we've changed the stars to hearts for likes
Users: no no, zero Nazis please
Twitter: yep we're getting rid of Vine
Users: nah hey, what about the Nazis
Twitter: ok ok fine, no more likes https://t.co/HKE0BrCiVU
— Josh Butler (@JoshButler) October 29, 2018