Like buttons

I think of likes on social media kind of like non-verbal responses in the real world. When I say something clever and someone around me smiles, they don’t have to think of something thoughtful to say as a response, I know they liked what I said, and that makes me happy.

This is a quote from Chris Hannah from Like Buttons which in itself its a quote from I’m Once Again Defending Like Buttons by Birchtree

It reminded me of this commit i made a few years back where i thought something similar.

My twitter polling mechanism has failed a few times this last week and i started thinking how useful and how much content they provide. None. This was my conclusion. They only appear as a log of actions i have made, they dont provide any useful or new content. They feel like a robotic dump of things, it doesnt feel human. Also likes doesnt always means a like, sometimes is something else that you cant understand without the context. Thats why im removing them and sticking only with tweets and retweets. Also searching on the web, i found this article that express somewhat what i think. https://petermolnar.net/article/making-things-private/

Maybe likes arent that bad, but the bullshit algorithms and metrics around them.

I also liked this quote from Notes On Hypertext by Robin Rendle

I think that’s one quality of a good old blog; reader agency. I remember late nights roaming through my favorite blogs and I’d find something, a small trinket of the tiniest little poem, from way back in 2002. And because there were no likes or comments or anything attached to the post, I decided it was important.