Twitter to remove ‘like’ tool in a bid to improve the quality of debate • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter to remove ‘like’ tool in a bid to improve the quality of debate

#61

Post by jobigoud » Mon, Oct 29, 2018, 12:14 PM UTC

They should do like HN: keep the button but remove the counter visibility. I would like to see this generalized to all social networks actually. You still get to do an appreciation gesture but without entering the popularity contest. Maybe the author of the post could still see the total.

YouTube "dislike" button on comments also works like this, you can dislike but it's not counted. In this case it's a bit stupid since the likes are counted, but I feel it's still an improvement.

Re: Twitter to remove ‘like’ tool in a bid to improve the quality of debate

#62

Post by acoye » Mon, Oct 29, 2018, 12:17 PM UTC

So if you want to interact, you have to formulate a thought in an elegant message? Most wont pass the barrier of having to think hard about something. (ie. thinking fast and slow / switching from system 1 to system 2 is _hard_)

Re: Twitter to remove ‘like’ tool in a bid to improve the quality of debate

#63

Post by sodosopa » Mon, Oct 29, 2018, 12:17 PM UTC

I use the “like” button a lot but mainly because Twitter doesn’t have a read later or save function. I don’t necessarily like because I enjoy the content, I like because I want to digest it at a different time

Re: Twitter to remove ‘like’ tool in a bid to improve the quality of debate

#64

Post by jobigoud » Mon, Oct 29, 2018, 12:18 PM UTC

mxstbr wrote: post #5

That's a radical departure from their 2015 stance[0]: “The heart is more expressive, enabling you to convey a range of emotions and easily connect with people. And in our tests, we found that people loved it.” I wonder when they're going to start testing this and what the results are. I hope they share what they learn, this could be an interesting experiment given how core a part of Twitter the like/favorite button h…

But removing a feature doesn't have the same weight as adding a new one. Most probably the people that got accustomed to it will be very vocal about the removal, while nobody ever cries over a new feature they don't like, they just not use it.

Re: Twitter to remove ‘like’ tool in a bid to improve the quality of debate

#65

Post by Phee7the » Mon, Oct 29, 2018, 12:20 PM UTC

josefresco wrote: post #21

Not sure about likes but Twitter without retweets is a much better place. The people I follow rarely say something with their own voice, and I was tired of the "outrage" tweets for every new social issue. my feed is not much quieter, and when my Tweeps do say something, I pay attention.

When you're following artists reetweets can be useful to discover their fellow artists. Not all of twitter is about debating current political events.

Re: Twitter to remove ‘like’ tool in a bid to improve the quality of debate

#66

Post by cujo » Mon, Oct 29, 2018, 12:20 PM UTC

People love to rail on twitter, but where's the movement to leave? It's hardly a necessity for life in 99% of use cases, They're a company with arguably questionable morals, and their current resurgence is predicated almost entirely on Trump (make of that what you will).

Just quit it already.

Re: Twitter to remove ‘like’ tool in a bid to improve the quality of debate

#67

Post by buboard » Mon, Oct 29, 2018, 12:21 PM UTC

pornel wrote: post #20

I don't think quality of "debate" on Twitter can be salvaged. Everything was designed for "engagement" and turned out to be rage-inducing machine. Quote-retweet is used to send followers to harass the person responsible for the awful tweet. RT is choir-preaching (you're a monster if you don't RT that kicking babies is bad), and replies to twitter-celebrities' tweets give everyone their 15 minutes of fame to post the…

sure it can. the higher the effort the better. they should remove retweets too. i cant remember how many people i have unfollowed because they keep retweeting their political nonsense.

(in fact they should remove retweets and keep likes for the vanity crowd, as long as those are not interfering with my timeline whatsoever)

Re: Twitter to remove ‘like’ tool in a bid to improve the quality of debate

#68

Post by nothis » Mon, Oct 29, 2018, 12:21 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #36

Reposted every time it's relevant: https://twitter.com/actioncookbook/status/684515262712967170... "USERS: we love twitter but it has problems TWITTER: great we'll fix them USERS: do you want to know what they are TWITTER: absolutely not USERS: you're alienating the people who actually use your product TWITTER: likes are now florps USERS: what TWITTER: timeline goes sideways" (The irony is that likes used to have a c…

Here's what I'm thinking when companies remove votes or scores or whatever: They're just hiding the problem. Like, people still like the stuff, it's just no longer tracked. They sure as hell won't stop tracking views or whatever. Which are likely (heh) just a factor removed from "likes".

The problem is that you're giving fake news the power to dominate million's of people's twitter feeds if you're just ruthless enough.

Re: Twitter to remove ‘like’ tool in a bid to improve the quality of debate

#69

Post by andrepd » Mon, Oct 29, 2018, 12:22 PM UTC

sodosopa wrote: post #63

I use the “like” button a lot but mainly because Twitter doesn’t have a read later or save function. I don’t necessarily like because I enjoy the content, I like because I want to digest it at a different time

It's a tweet. How long can it take to read that you have to save it for later?

Re: Twitter to remove ‘like’ tool in a bid to improve the quality of debate

#70

Post by mwill » Mon, Oct 29, 2018, 12:23 PM UTC

I don't think likes are the problem, I think twitter surfacing tweets based on likes is the problem. Replace them with a bookmark button that doesn't effect timelines at all, and imo that's a real improvement right off the bat.