Why Users Retweet Before Reading Understand Whos Fault

Twitter users may exist about to find out what Twitter is like when about everything people use it for has been demolished.

Then again, we could also exist overreacting to a scrap of social media-fueled hysteria.

On Midweek, unconfirmed reports that Twitter was planning to essentially impale the like and retweet buttons by making them invisible spread throughout the platform, accompanied by a flurry of panic from Twitter users who recognized exactly how detrimental such a move would be to the site's health, well-being, and community appointment.

But the reports may have been premature, and slightly inaccurate. And while Twitter later on issued a clarification, it didn't entirely settle the matter. Let's pause down what's really going on.

Twitter is working on an app designed to improve conversation overall

Twitter has long been working on the release of a new mobile app, "twttr." The app has a few specific aims, one of which is to make long, threaded conversations on Twitter easier to read. As yous can see in the below screenshot — taken from a beta version of twttr by Vox's sis site The Verge — a thread in the app volition look similar to a typical threaded word on LiveJournal or Reddit, with successive reply strands beingness indented accordingly.

Casey Newton/The Verge

And if you lot look closely, you'll notice that this change to the interface doesn't leave any room, once y'all curlicue past a parent tweet, for Twitter's familiar like, reply, and retweet counters.

On Tuesday, Twitter released a paradigm version of the app to a express group of testers. Multiple tech sites reviewed information technology, simply few if any seemed to consider the buried implications of the streamlined threads: no visible likes and RTs.

That changed on Wednesday, when miscommunicated news near the app began to cause alarm.

Misinformation about what's happening to likes and RTs chop-chop went viral

On Wednesday, NBC News reported on some of the changes the new "twttr" app heralded. Although NBC did notation that likes and retweets would be hidden "backside a tap," it didn't register the potential significance of such a alter from users' perspective, instead focusing more than on changes to Twitter'southward photographic camera features. NBC besides originally misstated that the app was removing the likes and retweets entirely, which added to the confusion and sent Twitter running to clarify its plans.

Yesterday, we started giving people access to our prototype app twttr which nosotros're using to test new ideas and become feedback. Putting likes and retweets backside a tap is just an thought to aid make conversations easier to read. https://t.co/HTI3ImTYe6

— Twitter Comms (@TwitterComms) March thirteen, 2019

Only many Twitter users immediately panicked over the idea that likes and retweets were potentially being removed altogether. One tweet that spread rapidly earlier its possessor later deleted it suggested incorrectly that Twitter was removing these date stats rather than hiding them, and that the change was being rolled out across Twitter instead of "just" being tested in a prototype app currently only seen by a few people, with no guarantee of always becoming part of Twitter's cadre feel.

"Removing Retweet and Like numbers is HUGE and is certain to upset virtually everybody," the user posted before realizing their fault. But past that time, panic had already begun to gear up in:

hello, twitter hiding date counts (likes and retweets) will be absolutely destructive to community-finding and community-making here. social action doesn't come but from tweeting and replying, just from liking and retweeting also. those numbers testify what people intendance about.

— jonny dominicus (@jonnysun) March thirteen, 2019

Twitter is proposing to hide engagement metrics (likes/retweets) to make the site "friendlier" past removing the appearance of ranking.

Hither is the truth: they find the concept of "the ratio" embarrassing to powerful people and embarrassing to exist associated with.

— Alexandra Erin (@alexandraerin) March thirteen, 2019

excited for Jack to destroy my livelihood

— Gretchen Felker-Martin (@scumbelievable) March thirteen, 2019

And at present, before we get whatsoever further, nosotros need to take a stride back — and a few deep breaths. Currently, Twitter's plans to implement these changes as function of the new twttr app are unknown. And in that location is no indication that they will ever affect the larger site as a whole.

But in that location is even so a reason to be concerned for Twitter's similar-based ecosystem. And given that concern, all the fears being expressed over potentially hidden likes and retweets have merit. Considering hiding likes and RTs would, in essence, be the end of Twitter as we know it.

Information technology's madness to consider hiding or removing likes and RTs, but Jack Dorsey keeps talking about doing it anyway.

It'southward highly understandable that many people read well-nigh Twitter "removing" likes and RTs and assumed the changes were about to have upshot across the platform. That'southward considering Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has been talking about his desire to get rid of the similar push since last fall, supposedly in the name of "incentivizing healthy conversation."

He first floated the thought at the Wired25 briefing in October 2018, and and then raised it once again less than two weeks later on at a private Twitter result, where he reportedly promised to delete the like button "before long." This apparent promise, originally reported past the Telegraph, drew scrutiny from the media and plenty of backlash from Twitter users. It besides prompted a swift demurral from Twitter itself, which issued an official statement noting that the platform had "no specific timeline for changes or particular planned changes to discuss."

One Twitter communications staffer even walked back Dorsey's "soon" timeline with an explicit negation:

Short story on "like." We've been open that we're considering it. Jack even mentioned information technology in front end of the US Congress. At that place'south no timeline. It'south not happening "soon." https://t.co/jXBmkudWYv

— Brandon Borrman (@bborrman) October 29, 2018

Merely Twitter notably didn't say that removing the like push was off the table completely. Equally a effect, users' concerns haven't gone away.

And many of those concerns are valid, because some of the rumored changes, if they practice come to laissez passer, would fundamentally alter Twitter's purpose.

But removing likes would be bad. But even just hiding both likes and RTs could be apocalyptic.

The ongoing conversation about creating healthier discourse on Twitter hasn't exactly been served by the confusion surrounding the fate of likes and retweets. In particular, there are several slight differences between what Twitter has actually proposed in the by, what it's currently doing, what information technology could feasibly do in the future, and what Twitter users retrieve it's going to do.

The idea of removing likes birthday — the idea that Dorsey offset floated in October — was most completely removing the ability to similar a tweet. It'south a fraught idea; amid many other reasons I'll get to in a moment, the Twitter like is multifunctional, serving as a way to passively response and collaborate as well as a bookmarking, scheduling, and notation tool.

Nonetheless, but ditching the like push button would yet allow users to retweet and betoken-boost of import conversations — meaning the bones ecosystem of the site could theoretically continue to alive on without also much infrastructure collapse.

The envisioned change that Twitter users foresaw in the prototype twttr app, nonetheless, was one in which both likes and retweets would continue to exist but would be subconscious from public view by default. While the app allows users to view these stats by tapping to reveal them, remember that most people didn't realize this at outset — and panicked considering they thought these features had vanished.

Hiding likes and retweets is arguably a much more subversive change, because it diminishes Twitter users' power to drag some voices and opinions over others. Retweets and likes have always been crucial tools that allow the greater Twitter community to drown out trolls and other detritus, while simultaneously helping good conversations, viral moments, and underprivileged and marginalized voices proceeds attention.

If those tools are hidden by default, it stands to reason that virality on Twitter would cease to exist.

If Twitter gets rid of likes, that is fine. If you enjoy one of my tweets, simply bring a lasagna to my place of residence. Then I will know from how many lasagnas I have in the lasagna shed whether people like or dislike a tweet. This plan is foolproof.

— Roxi Horror (@roxiqt) March 13, 2019

The aforementioned is true for the fabled "ratio" — the relatively young but widely dear Twitter meme that involves shading the hell out of tweets that become far more comments than likes and retweets — essentially a snarkier version of a community's commonage downvote. Without easily visible tallies of likes, comments, and retweets, users wouldn't accept a clear indication of when a tweet or a chat was causing controversy or becoming extremely unpopular. There would exist no simple mode to tell, for example, exactly how much people on Twitter dislike Paul Ryan, or when a tweet you posted is bad, really.

Without a demonstrable feed hierarchy, every tweet, every stance, and every response to that opinion would be rendered equal. And egalitarianism is exactly what Twitter users don't want.

As anyone who's spent more than 5 seconds on the internet understands, all opinions are not created equal. Twitter already has a very well-documented problem with harassment. And while Dorsey seems to think that removing the like button would offering a improve, healthier way for people to collaborate beyond polarized ideological divides, to many users, the idea of putting trolls and bad-faith debaters on a more than equal footing with their targets sounds more similar a nightmare.

This is not a fucking debate site and the people who harasss you and so attack you for not "debating" them are the ones that demand to exist removed, @jack @twitter, not the "similar" button. Either remove the fucking racists or just admit that you're on their fucking side. https://t.co/xIaGBJxXI3

— Celeste Ng (@pronounced_ing) October 29, 2018

Plus, hiding likes and RTs would potentially modify so many tiny things about how Twitter functions that it's difficult to even comprehend them all. For case, if you're friended by someone with 10,000 followers, a good way to tell if those followers are mainly bots is to survey the user's appointment stats; if none of those x,000 followers are liking their tweets, those users are probably bots, and the follower may also be a bot. Without the ability to rapidly estimate how many likes and retweets someone is getting, it becomes more difficult to identify fake Twitter profiles.

Or consider the split-2d decision process you go through when deciding whether to amplify someone else's tweet by retweeting it. If yous're similar me, you tend to shy away from retweeting something that's already gotten thousands of retweets, for fear of existence repetitive or boring and clogging up the Twitter feeds of your followers with a tweet they've already seen multiple times that day. Without the RT count being visible, that entire decision procedure goes abroad, for meliorate or worse.

These small but meaningful ripple furnishings could fundamentally change Twitter as nosotros know it.

Information technology bears repeating over again that all these changes are rumored and speculative, and there's no solid evidence that a major diminishment of Twitter'due south engagement features is on the style.

Merely if Twitter users' worst fears are somewhen realized, it wouldn't be the first time that a social media visitor either misunderstood or ignored what its users loved about the site and fabricated changes that drastically altered those users' experience. The current Twitter hysteria may exist a false alarm, but information technology's rooted in very real and very valid concerns.

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Source: https://www.vox.com/2019/3/14/18264372/twitter-twttr-app-removing-likes-retweets-ratio

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