Twitter founder says they “want to change” likes and followers in response to Kanye West tweet
TIMEPopular music artist Kanye West wants changes to be made to how likes and followers are displayed on Twitter, and Jack Dorsey, the social media platform’s founder, agrees.
Kanye West believes that Twitter users’ likes and followers are too prominently displayed on the platform, creating a culture that puts too much value into how popular everyone is on social media.
“We should be able to participate in social media without having to show how many followers or likes we have,” the rapper explained in a tweet. “Just like how we can turn off the comments, we should be able to turn off the display of followers. This has an intense negative impact on our self worth.”
Kanye’s tweet caught the attention of Jack Dorsey, and the two began a private conversation in which the Twitter CEO revealed that the platform is considering reforming the likes and followers system in order to reduce their significance in the public forum.
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“We’ve been thinking deeply about the follower and like counts, and what that incentivizes. We want to change,” Dorsey said in a text message. “Us making that number bold and big incentivized people to want to increase it, and feel bad if they couldn’t. That’s not right.”
It’s clear that both West and Dorsey believe that people should want to use Twitter to contribute to “the global conversation,” rather than build up a large follower-base just because that is what is demanded in today’s social culture.
Although there doesn’t appear to be any hint of immediate change in the near future, the fact that the CEO of Twitter is publicly having this sort of conversation does hint at major changes coming to the platform at some point.