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Twitter Plans To Remove 'Like' Button in a Bid To Improve the Quality of Debate, Report Says (telegraph.co.uk)

Posted by msmash on from the how-about-that dept.

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."

5 of 185 comments (clear)

  1. Bookmarks to come back? by swinferno · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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
    1. Re:Bookmarks to come back? by cayenne8 · · Score: 1, Interesting
      I'm wondering what the problem with the "like" button is?

      Could it be that too many people are liking the "wrong" things?

      Perhaps too many people are liking things that go against the political bent of the Twitter owners/management believe in?

      --
      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
  2. Please copy bookface by Tomahawk · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Please copy bookface by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Simple likes do have some advantages. The fact that you can't down mod prevents a lot of trolling and control of the narrative by censorship. It forces people to post a reply instead of just modding down. You see both sides of the argument.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  3. woah by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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?