Slashdot Mirror
Twitter Plans To Remove 'Like' Button in a Bid To Improve the Quality of Debate, Report Says (telegraph.co.uk)
Twitter is planning to remove the ability to "like" tweets in a radical move that aims to improve the quality of debate on the social network, UK news outlet The Telegraph (paywalled) reports, citing CEO Jack Dorsey's comments at a recent company event. From the report: Founder Jack Dorsey last week admitted at a Twitter event that he was not a fan of the heart-shaped button and that it would be getting rid of it "soon." The feature was introduced in 2015 to replace "favourites," a star-shaped button that allowed people to bookmark tweets to read later. Update: In a statement, Twitter neither confirmed nor denied the report, adding that it was indeed in the process of rethinking "everything." It said, "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."
Wonder if the bookmark option will come back. That made more sense to me anyway.
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell
Such voting systems tend to let every discussion platform devolve into something as low as politics. And by that I don't mean real world politics, but what politicians tend to do when conversing with each other or the public.
get rid of rightwing nutjobs
Finally they're adding a dislike bu... oh wait. Never mind.
It's like to be able to say 'like' or 'don't like' or 'funny', 'sad', etc, similar to what Bookface do. Add more option, don't take the option away. Learn from how your users want to use your product, don't dictate.
The feature was introduced in 2015 to replace "favourites," a star-shaped button that allowed people to bookmark tweets to read later.
You don't have enough time to read a tweet now, but you do have enough time to realize that you should read it later?
After you've banned all the dissenting voices?
Or, as a certain ideological orientation is wont to do, are we redefining debate to mean obedient agreement?
Let's face it, Twitter debates look like this, removing a 'like' button will do little to improve the situation.
[Like]
(that's all) -- seriously removing like could jest result in lots of comments like "yes", "agree", or "ok"
Gimme a break. Twitter sells rage while attempting to maintain a certain agenda.
Check your premises.
How was favorites different than like? Was it just a name change? I never stopped using bookmarks/favorites as anything more than bookmarks.
Yeah, favourites and likes are not the best way to keep track of tweets, but short of using the web browser bookmark functionality, there isn't an easy way to bring up a structured 'reference library' of tweets that you wish to refer back to.
Twitter is often not used as a simple social media platform, it's a publishing platform that enforces odd behaviour in terms of limited tweet sizes, threads of tweets, and so on.
What a lot of people would like is a tweet reference library, with categories (user-defined tags, rather than a hierarchy, would be preferred IMO), that does not indicate any form of endorsement of the tweet, or indeed any desire to notify the publisher.
Facebook-style Likes, Angers, etc, are nice for a social media platform for people when posting their cat picture and so on. They're a blunt tool of populism when it comes to platforms that are more than just that - especially when it comes to politics.
Isn't the 'like' button one of the metrics on a tweet's popularity. Wonder how posters on twitter will take this, lol. And yea... "Quality of debate" in less than 240 characters.
starts sliding into the sea the very next day?
People who speak proper English can't have a productive debate and always keep to 140 characters or less. People who "excel" at Twitter are why Youtube stars are soon going to be running the world.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
> It may work out well, if most of the community is sensible and there's impartial moderators that do their job. But I've seen the opposite happen often enough, where dissenting opinions which are factually more correct than the simplistic bullshit get 'downvoted into oblivion' while the simplistic bullshit stays on top (using standard sorting).
That's a problem on Slashdot.
Somebody will post "the boss / execs will never go to jail!" and that's instantly plus five. I point out that the boss was arrested a few months ago and is looking at ten to twenty years, and provide a link, that gets modded to -1.
Very often what's modded up the most is the opposite of the plain facts, while a link to thr actual facts gets modded down because it doesn't fit the narrative.
You need a "smiley face" to indicate that you "like" something? Are you functionally illiterate? Mentally challenged? A child under the age of 4?
I don't respond to AC's.
Every social media platform tries to eliminate the "like" button lately. You see, if there is a "like" button and no "dislike" button (which can be abused by the internet thought patrol to silence dissidents), all voices will be heard and most importantly their impact will be assessed (to a degree). Which isn't good if you are progressive CEO of a "hip" tech startup who believes in political bullying and the silencing of "non-progressive" voices.
because who has time to read 140 characters now?!
TL;DR
twitter is horrid and i lose respect for anybody who actively uses it
(that's all) -- seriously removing like could jest result in lots of comments like "yes", "agree", or "ok"
Right. So? Does clicking a little "smiley face" or a "thumbs up" indicate something deeper than "yes", "agree", or "OK"?
I don't respond to AC's.
Every browser that I'm aware of already has bookmarks. You should try that feature. It works really well.
I don't respond to AC's.
[Evangelize!] [Like] [Meh] [Dislike] [Belittle] [Threaten]
I agree, Slashdot's mod system is better than most.
Perhaps it would be helpful to have a "-1 I disagree" or "-1 fuck this guy", along with "+1 I believe this too" that are decoys - they don't actually do anything. Lol
The minority in every context has to face the results of peer pressure. It's subjective as to how horrific that pressure may be. You special isolated snow flakes might freak out over relatively nothing. You also might be anti-social and need that popular peer pressure to trigger EVOLVED emotions so you either adapt to function in the social group or you leave and try to survive alone (which is easy in our modern disconnected abstracted society.)
The majority power sets the guidelines... unless authoritarian, then the power is disproportionate... which to the minority perspective looks like almost the same thing since the way such things are carried out are not by seeing the whole majority crowd acting as one-- they are almost always represented in some way by a few entities.
Up/Down voting is NOT bullying. Peer pressure / social pressure can seem similar to bullying but are not the same; although, depending on how you define it and the situation it can be the same. Bullying can be a parent forcing rules upon a child; trying to define it so it can't apply to that but also applies everywhere it's used is not so easy. Question is then, is all bullying bad? or do we play legal games trying to define it so it allows stuff we approve of? (like terrorism for example which ends up being subjective hypocrisy because that approach doesn't work.) The reasonable end position is that bullying is not always bad (by far better than accepting hypocrisy-- something we now seem to be doing instead.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
The only winning move is not to use twitter. :)
Because it is the perfect medium for twats.
L'Idiot
It's a horrible place where the most horrible people are given soap boxes. I changed my password to something I wouldn't remember, logged out and never looked back. Facebook is in the same boat. Never got instagram. Seems to be just people posing and pretending to have lives, when in reality they spend most of their time trying to show that they have lives.
Twitter is a shithole and @jack is a nazi.
Why the fuck don't these social media companies provide a "Hate" button? Wake the fuck up.
Any bets one whether the button replacing this button will be a yellow moon or a green clover?
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
You NPC monkeys are being incorporated into a mocking bird script. You don't like, you don't debate. You listen and do what you are f***ing told. Understand?
who would've(off) thunk.
It can be a problem how the platform shares anything you "like" with others that follow you. I regularly see the adult content shared on twitter to generate subscriptions to online video platforms due to someone I follow. He doesn't have terrible taste, but I don't really need to know what gets him off.
Now that the prohibition against murder and terrorism is losing popularity
Hey, man, no need to bring BLM into this ...
When Twitter allowed free speech I don't remember a concentrated effort to kill their company like we're seeing with Gab. I wish the coastal elite who can de-platform anyone who doesn't play ball would at least try to hide their political agenda - I don't like knowing that I'm living in a repressive dystopia. The current state of affairs isn't good for my soul.
Hmm....it seems to me the radical statements like YOURS above, are a problem too....
It illustrates how there are fringes on BOTH sides. This is some of the first we've seen that is this egregious from the radical fringe 'right' side of the spectrum, but you do also need to acknowledge how much of this type of hate and violence has come from the radical and fringe 'left'...remember the shooting at the congressional baseball practice that almost kill Mr. Scalise? How about all the many ANTIFA and similar riots in cities and colleges in the western and northwestern US ?
Those were not a pretty picture, and also the suppression of conservative speakers on college campuses by threats of violence/rioting from those on the left?
There are no clean hands on the extremes of either political spectrum.
I think most normal level headed folks condemn those acts.
I think politicians on BOTH sides need to condemn this and call for order on both sides.
I will admit, I'm a bit perplexed by Waters and other democrat elected officials have been calling for active intrusions and confrontation of any of those public officials on the right tho.....THAT is something that needs to be shut down immediately, and I'm surprised this has not happened from the leaders of the Dem side.
Protest and demonstrations of your views and disagreements are part of the US, but any violent act or intrusions on the rights and lives of those you disagree with have NO place in our society.
So, please.....try to take your blinders off, and see the truth out there. MSNBC spews out as much vitriol and misinformation as Fox does.
There's plenty of flavors of Kool-Aid out there, and it appears you are heavily sipping from one of them too, just as much as those you are speaking about on the other side.
Remember, when you point at someone, you have 3 fingers pointing back at you.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Twitter it seems will not stop until the company is dead.
The fact is that Twitter can never reconcile that to have a popular social network, they will have to allow for people of differing views to make use of it. They keep dancing around that basic fact yet will not embrace it, even though any time they get close it leads to more users.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Why not? I think the Department of the Interior is one of the least understood parts of the federal government by most people, despite how its decisions really do have an effect on many Americans, especially in the western USA. I bet 9/10 Americans don't even know who Michael Nedd is.
This is exactly the kind of thing people could, and should, discuss on Twitter instead of the usual celebrity who-slept-with-whom rumors, retweeting the president's calls for increased violence, misleading Corei9 benchmarks, or whatever. If you Eastern Americans don't like the topic of BLM, change the fucking channel. BLM still matters in the west and I drive within view of their land every single day. It's part of many millions of peoples' lives. Seriously. And yet, it is rarely discussed in politics. Who is paying you to tell people to not mention BLM? Do you work for big oil?
Twitr wansa imprv t qualty of Dbate, so theyR remvg t LIKE butn? I wndr if they cood do NEthing else 2 imprv t qualty of Dbate... like, I dunno, mA B doin away w the bullsht character limit? #280stillNOTenuf!
But what do you do about it, when it's happening on your privately-owned computer that you made for your commercial purposes?
Do you just trash it, or do you stop providing a way to 'worship' or spread it (through a like button), or do you expend effort to debate? When people do "wrong" things on your computer, the most vicious, harshest thing you can do is .. not really a big deal. The sky is the limit on your computer. There's nothing to be really be worried about if Twitter decides to do the same thing. As big as they are, there will always be hundreds of alternatives.
Every thought that every person has doesn't need to have feedback that it was 'right'.
Master Debater. :)
[($)]
The funny thing in this topic is that red states have prisons with the least amount of racial segregation and race wars; blacks, whites, and latinos, mixing and just living it out, while the "progressive" blue states like your western regions have the highest amount of racial friction and prisons being racial war-grounds. So it's not the Department of the Interior making it so, it's your dumbshit politics which does and in an ironic manner, it's BLM which does. Surprise surprise, people who twist their lives about preaching race create more trouble than solutions, much like Jim Jones.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgrha6vij1I
Yeah @jack. That's going to fix twitter, you fascist enabling coward.
Slashdot
A very smart person told me that, if Twitter is not an agora for you (an enjoyable one), then you're not doing it right. I think he is right and it's harder than I seemed like it would be. It's kind of hard to curate a set of folks to follow that remains interesting and reasonably free of mindless trolling/counter-trolling/r99999. Especially in the political arena.
TIL Twitter has debates.
/s (?)
--- Keep the choice with the user..
I can't help but read this as increasing the rate in which people readily agree with whatever ideas their blue checkmark agitators tell them they are supposed to agree with.
Even North Korean elections aren't this disingenuous.