National

Twitter may remove like button to promote ‘healthy conversation.’ Dislike, some say

By Josh Magness

October 29, 2018 01:59 PM

Twitter may remove the like button. The social media platform said it is in the “early stages” of considering how to promote “healthy conversation” — but denied a Telegraph report the change was happening soon.
Twitter may remove the like button. The social media platform said it is in the “early stages” of considering how to promote “healthy conversation” — but denied a Telegraph report the change was happening soon. Richard Drew AP
Twitter may remove the like button. The social media platform said it is in the “early stages” of considering how to promote “healthy conversation” — but denied a Telegraph report the change was happening soon. Richard Drew AP

Reports that Twitter might get rid of it’s “like” button to promote “healthy conversation” has some searching for a dislike button, too.

The Twitter Comms account for the social media platform sent out a message Monday pushing back against a story in The Telegraph that said Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey admitted that the like button would “soon” be removed.

Instead, Twitter wrote in the statement that the idea, while being considered, is nowhere near implementation.

“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,” the statement read. “We are in the early stages of the work and have no plans to share right now.”

As explained by Tech Crunch, likes — a way of showing your approval for a tweet with a heart-shaped button — can get tweets more exposure through Twitter’s algorithm as it attempts to show readers popular posts.

“If a large amount of people — or, maybe just as likely, bots — like that Tweet, this can also help push it along in Twitter’s algorithms, where it gets surfaced in lists, in your notifications, and in people’s timelines because of its popularity,” as reported by TechCrunch. “Thus, when that Tweet might have a nefarious intention, hearts can lead to heartbreak.”

Senator Mark Warner (D-Va.) criticized Google for not sending a high-level executive to appear in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee for a hearing on internet meddling with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg.

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At the WIRED25 summit earlier this month, Dorsey seemed to wonder whether the “like” feature was causing more harm than good.

“We have a big like button with a heart on it and we’re incentivizing people to want it to go up,” Dorsey said, according to Mashable. “Is that the right thing? Versus contributing to the public conversation or a healthy conversation? How do we incentivise healthy conversation?”

But many on the social media platform said they didn’t see removing the like button as a cure-all solution to encourage more respectful dialogue online.

Many wrote that they would rather see Twitter act more quickly to ban users who promote offensive or threatening ideas.

The comments came days after Democratic strategist Rochelle Ritchie, who often appears on Fox News, revealed she had been sent threatening messages by Cesar Sayoc, the 56-year-old man accused of sending pipe bombs to a slew of prominent critics of Trump.

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She accused Twitter of ignoring her complaints about the messages. Twitter has since apologized.

While some used the news to encourage stronger community rules, others wanted to take advantage of the like button in case it goes away.

One person asked what they were going to do without it.

And, well, there were a couple of... unique ideas, too.

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