Several years ago, Twitter switched out the star-shaped Favorites button and turned it into a heart “Like” icon. There is a chance that Twitter may be getting rid of the heart icon in order to “improve the quality of debate” though.
According to a report by The Telegraph UK, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said that he was “not a fan of the heart-shaped button” and that the company will be removing it soon. This news comes as a surprise because many Twitter users utilize the feature to provide feedback about tweets and bookmark tweets as well.
Twitter believes that the heart-shaped button could be the reason for “social media addiction,” meaning users often seek validation based on the number of likes they have. And often times, users will delete tweets if it does not receive enough likes.
“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,” said Twitter in a tweet in response to The Telegraph UK report. “We are in the early stages of the work and have no plans to share right now.”
Dorsey also recently spoke in front of Congress about how the company is working on countering manipulation on its platform. This includes the removal of millions of fake accounts.
