Twitter is hiding Likes and RTs

Twitter's prototype Twttr app hides likes and RTs behind a tap in a bid to "focus on replies". But will this really result in better conversation?

There’s a new version of Twitter. Sort of. This week, Twitter launched a prototype app for initial select users to test. The app, called “Twttr” in reference to founder Jack Dorsey’s first tweet, suggests a few changes to the social media platform we’ve all come to love-hate. One of the most interesting is a tweak to how likes (or “faves”) and retweets are displayed on the app.

On Twttr, the number of likes, retweets and replies a tweet has received is not immediately displayed. When scrolling through the feed, you see just the words of the tweet; the name, handle and picture of the account that tweeted it; and the date. The little heart, retweet and share signs we’re accustomed to seeing beneath every tweet are hidden. They haven’t completely disappeared, but they are now “behind a tap”, meaning you have to actually click on a tweet to engage with if before you can see how many likes, retweets and replies it has received.

Interactions such as likes and retweets have become a defining feature of most social media platforms and, consciously or not, are often one of the first things we use to judge a post. See a tweet with lots of likes or RTs and you may deem it more worth your attention than one that has gone largely ignored; see a tweet with more replies than likes or RTs – a condition known in internet slang as “The Ratio” – and you can probably assume that it is controversial (or just plain bad). How could hiding these signals change our behaviour?

 Like most social media sites, Twitter uses algorithms to choose what to promote into your timeline, and these are partly influenced by the number of interactions a tweet has received. As a result, hiding engagement counters may make it more difficult to figure out why you are seeing a tweet in the first place.