Twitter is removing the "like" button because there's nothing to fucking like there anyway
The Telegraph reports that Twitter is considering removing the social media platform’s heart-shaped “like” button, a move that one might find heavy-handed in light of the company’s historically heartless approach to its hate speech problem. The goal is ostensibly is help curb social media addiction and, um “improve the quality of debate,” which, what?
This news, it should be stated, comes literally days after Twitter apologized for not removing a reported tweet sent by mail bomb suspect Cesar Sayoc Jr. to a Democratic strategist just two weeks before his homemade bombs started landing in mailboxes. “Hug your loved ones real close every time you leave you home,” read part of the threatening tweet, which, if you were ever so unlucky to browse the dude’s account, is a sentiment he sent out to a lot of different people.
But, yeah, let’s get rid of the “like” button and the delicious joy that comes from fools getting ratio’d into oblivion.
CEO Jack Dorsey reportedly “admitted at a Twitter event” that he doesn’t really dig the “like” button and hopes to rid the platform of it “soon.” That said, Twitter representatives have taken to the platform to clear the air, with the Twitter Comms account saying they are in the “early stages” of those discussions.
“We’ve been open that we’re considering it,” added Twitter’s Brandon Borrman. “Jack even mentioned it in front of the US Congress. There’s no timeline. It’s not happening ‘soon.’”
Hopefully that’s because they’re considering more pressing issues, like the fact that Twitter seems to only care about dangerous misinformation and death threats after someone else’s tweet calling out the platform’s inability to properly regulate itself gets a few thousand retweets of its own.
See below for an example of this happening literally yesterday:
All that said, though, what the hell is there to like anymore? Aside, of course, from @dril and a few random fluffy cat accounts.