Twitter is about to remove the red, heart-shaped 'like' function from its platform, reports suggest.
According to the Telegraph, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey said at a Twitter event last week that he would get rid of the like function "soon." Per the Telegraph, Dorsey said he "was not a fan of the heart-shaped button."
In March 2018, Twitter introduced a bookmarking function, which allows users to privately save tweets without hitting the like button – which not only implies a positive attitude towards the content of the tweet, but is also public.
Twitter's potential removal of the like button forms part of an effort to create a healthier climate of debate on the platform, the Telegraph reports.
Dorsey hinted at his dissatisfaction with the like function earlier this month 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?"
On the platform in question, people were pretty surprised by Dorsey's attitude to the 'like' button.
Many users pointed out that Twitter has much deeper challenges and that changing basic functionality was the wrong place to start improving the platform. Others will believe it when they see it.
The like button was added to Twitter in 2015 as replacement for the previous favorites button, which was star-shaped.
