X: This week we're making Likes private for everyone | Hacker News Reader

X: This week we're making Likes private for everyone

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39 pointstosh63 comments

This makes a lot of sense. In the current political climate people feel afraid of getting punished for liking the wrong thing. But it’s nice for the person whose post you liked to know who liked it.

If you want to appreciate something publicly then that’s what reshare is for.

> In the current political climate people feel afraid of getting punished for liking the wrong thing.

Like what? Can you provide an example of what kind of "wrong things" people get unfairly punished for liking?

I think the root question is whether someone should get punished for liking a tweet.

Many people may think that punishment should happen and thus the punishment is fair. Many people think that punishment shouldn't happen and thus the punishment isn't fair.

Most people believe both things but that it differs according to their ingroup.

Ultimately it is understanding and forgiveness that brings peace between people and groups and eventually dissolves the barriers between them.

This recent story comes to mind: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/jon-stewar...

> The US late-night satirist Jon Stewart has responded after Britain’s Labour Party blocked left-wing academic Faiza Shaheen from standing as a candidate in the upcoming general election for liking a number of potentially offensive social media posts, one of which featured a clip from The Daily Show.

For some countries (think US, Israel, China) I saw people having reservations on their sm activity - i.e. liking something against the gov, might prevent you from entering the country. Or at least this is how the story goes.

Liking Elon Musk posts, for example, would warrant grandparent calling them a "Nazi".

Then give us the option to hide it, don't take away one of the best ways to find new content.

This was already a feature for paid users, they could hide their likes, so if he really cared about privacy, he would give people the option, and have them hidden by default so that those who wish to have Likes can enable them. That way those less savvy or simply uninterested in going to the settings will have their accounts more private, and those who want it can have it.

This was an incredibly dumb change. No one asked for this, and there is no setting to keep likes public. We already had bookmarks.

Seeing other people's likes was a great way to find additional content.

Further illustrates that the purpose behind this change was to both protect a very small number of not-so-smart users and further remove analysis behind posts and its engagement.

Very poorly thought out.

Not if you’re into things that will get you “canceled”! I think this is designed specifically to make it easier to spread hate speech.

It will come back to bite people since the likes are still visible to the content creator. Elon has a history of liking stupid things and will be emboldened by this, and content creators may freely see/repost these likes on their accounts as endorsements.

Feels bad all around.

It’s being done in response to Elon Musk being caught liking some questionable things.

Now people (e.g., Musk) can like anti-Semitic and pro-white supremacy and pro-Nazi content all they want without fear of being exposed as anti-Semitic or pro-Nazi.

This is the real reason

More importantly, now how will we be able to make fun of politicians for "liking" weird porn on 9/11?

Indeed. Obviously this is the real reason for the change. Musk wants people to be able to follow whatever lunatic bullshit is out there without fear of being ridiculed. One can now be a sycophantic dupe without people knowing about it.

Using left examples of activities that could also be filtered as extremist.

One may definitely want to know all the people that liked a given Hamas post, BLM, Antifa, etc. How else are you going to keep the potentially disruptive and disastrous people out of your company.

edit: I'm not a proponent of this type of action, only pointing out that it isn't just "far right hate speech" that can be a target.

Yes. It works both ways as it always has. Being a communist was enough to get you fired at one time. Sinead O’Connor famously got canceled.

Someone liking a black lives matter post could be disastrous? That's an interesting take that definitely doesn't smell like white supremacy

Like lighting a police station on fire, shooting up a car, vandalization, tearing down a statue, or launching commercial fireworks at a courthouse? Can't see how someone might find that offensive at all (/s).

Those are not BLM, BLM is the support of the idea that there should be racial equity in policing. What you are describing is vandalism which is not what the person I'm replying to said

The riots, vandalism, etc was definitely under the BLM flag in terms of optics... which is why support for BLM was lower after the riots than before George Floyds death.

So if someone likes a conservative or trump related post should we automatically associate that person with the Jan 6 capital takeover?

What is the context of the post? Is the liked post about some J6er beating a Capital Hill staffer with a cane? Then, yeah, maybe they should be seen negatively.

Perhaps you should be considering the context of BLM posts then, no? Or are we only doing that for the side you like?

Try reading slower, I gave some specific contexts...

"Like lighting a police station on fire, shooting up a car, vandalization, tearing down a statue, or launching commercial fireworks at a courthouse"

Not to mention...

"I'm not a proponent of this type of action, only pointing out that it isn't just "far right hate speech" that can be a target."

Perhaps you should go back and reread your initial posts

"One may definitely want to know all the people that liked a given Hamas post, BLM, Antifa, etc. How else are you going to keep the potentially disruptive and disastrous people out of your company."

The BLM movement is more than just protests and some who vandalized buildings, which I should add much was caused by far right agitators just as with the recent student encampments, BLM is a movement about equity in policing. Say someone liked a post about equity in policing with a BLM hashtag, your subsequent post:

"The riots, vandalism, etc was definitely under the BLM flag in terms of optics..."

Would have one classify the post that I described as the same as rioting and vandalism, yet you can't seem to grasp the nuance here yet you somehow can if someone were to like a trump post unrelated to Jan 6. By your logic laid out, many people view the optics of trump's rhetoric through the lens of the violence that he induced on Jan 6.

I should also not that I am not a proponent of lumping things together like this, I am simply using the logic that you laid out and applying it to a similar situation.

You seem to be able to apply a nuanced view to only one side and not the other. I wonder why that might be?

Someone supporting equity in policing via the BLM movement is not the same as someone advocating for violent protest and rioting just as someone supporting trump is not necessarily supporting the violent takeover of a capital building.

The idea of Twitter as the “de facto public town square” seems a lot less plausible if post interactions are private.

This move edges it closer towards a purely broadcast medium. The transition would be complete as soon as users can moderate replies.

This feels like an experiment in reverse-engineering Twitter's USP by removing critical features until the network collapses.

> The transition would be complete as soon as users can moderate replies.

They already can.

They already had Bookmarks for the purpose of saving a Tweet without putting it on your public Likes feed, so what's the difference between a Like and a Bookmark now? I guess a Like gives an algorithm boost that a Bookmark probably doesn't, but that's a pretty opaque distinction for users.

Bookmarks are "this I may want to go see again later"

Likes are "I want to express a positive feeling towards this but don't care if I can ever see it again"

Not the same thing

Now nobody can tell that others have expressed positive feelings, which is the point, no?

The person who made the post still can, which is the point to me

I look at it more like walking up to someone and saying "Hey I like what you're doing" not like standing near them and shouting it for everyone to hear

I'm not on X much these days, but when I was, the greatest benefit of likes for me was when I would tweet something, I could see the folks who liked it. This has not changed.

My greatest annoyance around likes was how my feed would include "So and so like this" type tweets. Maybe that still exists, but if they removed that too, it'd be a welcome change.

Lots of great points being made in this thread, but for me personally, such a change would not affect my experience on the site.

> My greatest annoyance around likes was how my feed would include "So and so like this" type tweets. Maybe that still exists, but if they removed that too, it'd be a welcome change.

Couldn't agree more

I didn't want to see "so and so likes this" and I don't want others to see "bluefirebrand likes this"

If I wanted to share something then I would retweet it

It was also baffling that people could turn off seeing "so and so retweeted this" but not turn off seeing "so and so liked this"

Further killing the network effects that made the platform so powerful. Power users know how good it was on Tweetdeck with the Activity tab surfacing all the great tweets you wouldn't necessarily see. If likes are private now does that mean the For You tab will have even less powering it? Just so a bunch of ppl can creep on some 'questionable' tweets? Weak

I disagree. There's already a function for sharing the stuff you see

Turning a "like" into a sort of soft retweet was a bad move. Personally it made me much less likely to interact with stuff

I don't want it to surface every action I take to people who follow me

Does anyone actually even like the For You tab? All I ever see is "I was wondering why I was seeing so much garbage in my feed, turns out it changed me to For You and I didn't notice"

Resharing content is a very high bar. I will upvoted or like >50 things in a day, many days. I tend to reshare stuff ~4 times a week. These are - to me - very obviously different levels of networking & connection; I want to share what I like but I'm not trying to flood the zone & broadcast on main every little thing I enjoy that I run across; my actual account distills down to things that make it across a high threshold barrier. But heck yes people should be able to see yeah what else I'm enjoying if they want to deep dive!

What's fucking batshot insane is the lack of a feature is being imposed on everyone. Fine! Make it an option to hide your shameful guilty shit you don't want people to see! De-network if you must, if you are scared. But to take this away from everyone, to deny the option to network & share at this pleasant simple low level? That's insane. I cannot imagine how anyone would entertain such a destructive negative anti-network path as what should be forced on everyone.

> Make it an option to hide your shameful guilty shit you don't want people to see! De-network if you must, if you are scared

Why does it have to be about being "scared"?

In my mind a like is between me and the person who posted. Why does every little interaction have to be broadcast as far as possible?

And I agree the threshold for re-sharing is high. That's why turning likes into a soft re-share is annoying. I didn't want that shard.

I don't really care if my likes are hidden. I don't care if people can look at the likes on a post and find my account

But I don't want it broadcast either. If I wanted it broadcast I would use the "I want to broadcast this" button

> I want to share what I like but I'm not trying to flood the zone

But that's what it is doing by turning your likes into a reshare. Every like you make becomes part of the flood. Only you get to feel like you aren't doing it on purpose

I found it incredibly annoying when I would see more "someone liked this post" than actual new stuff

If my feed moves slower because I'm only seeing new posts and deliberate reshares then that is a good thing imo. I don't need the system to dig up infinite content for me by farming everyone's likes and other interactions

> But that's what it is doing by turning your likes into a reshare. Every like you make becomes part of the flood.

NACK. They're not. Likes are just likes, they're a lower indicator. Reshares are a much stronger endorsement, are intended for rebroadcast, as it says that on the tin. Trying to conflate the two to argue that we should stop making likes available is misdirection & dishonest construction. NACK.

It's obnoxious arguing with people obsessed with themselves. Your welcome to your own opinions & how you want to social, strongly though I disagree with them and find them sad and scared and bad for humanity. But imposing your limited low-information view on others & denying those who would allow this aspect of our socialness, because you claim it doesn't suit you, is egocentric & poor policymaking.

It's literally weak. Destroying network effect so that edgelords have a safe space to edgelord in. Musk is doing this literally to cover his own ass, which keeps liking some gross gross shameful shit (plenty of replacement theory likes, for example).

The discovery value cannot be overstated. Being able to take a smart networked person & go look and see what they like, being able to crib their best follows, is the express train to having a great social networking experience. I cannot imagine the damage someone has to have to snub that, all to go protect some silly edgelording.

Maybe an option to hide your likes is ok. But throwing this away for everyone is absurd. Throwing away so much good to protect the bad is a value system I cannot respect.

As a privacy preserving move, I like it. Even though I can’t be bothered to like anything there. They probably see that as a problem for their ranking algorithm, hence the change.

This just threw a huge wrench in the gears for a spambot detection system I was working on. The kind of content a spambot likes is a great indicator to choose whom to block or not.

In general this is such a good way to assess & browse & evaluate people. Trying to figure out who to follow & who is definitely not someone to follow gets much much harder when the like-feed goes dark.

Try as people might to defend this anti-networking anti-feature I just don't see it. It's an ok option for some I guess, sure, but tearing up your network unilaterally to create a safer space really just sends us into an even darker forest.

Ted Cruz will be relieved; https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/12/ted-cruz-twi...

Didn't they also just "allow" porn via some update to their rules? This change just seems like a way to say "hey, don't worry if you accidentally hit like on a porn tweet, we won't tell!"

Feels like another reason for this is to hide the rampant bot problem of obviously fake accounts liking tweets (and thereby pretending to have real engagement?)

I don’t use X/Twitter, but I am surprised it wasn’t always this way. People should be able to have a degree of privacy and anonymity while participating online. Cancel culture is very harmful to discussion, especially on politically controversial topics.

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