Delete the Star Already

You spend real time on something—an actual piece of writing, not a throwaway sentence—share it on Twitter, and what comes back? Three yellow stars. Nicole faved it. Flo faved it. Sandra faved it. Congratulations. Nothing happened.

Twitter was in the middle of one of its periodic self-reinventions back then—dropping @-replies, tweaking hashtag behavior, letting people upload more photos at once, possibly renaming the retweet button to something friendlier. Fine, whatever. But the one change that would’ve actually mattered was the one nobody seemed to be pushing for: killing the fav button.

There are exactly two useful things you can do when someone shares something on Twitter. Reply—start an argument, offer a counterpoint, just acknowledge that another person put something into the world. Or retweet, which at least extends what they made to an audience that hasn’t seen it. Both require the smallest possible effort. Both mean something.

A fav means nothing. Worse than nothing—it actively replaces the things that do mean something. Why reply when you can tap a star? Why share something when a yellow cluster of pixels signals that you’ve registered it and moved on? Faving is a limp handshake. It’s someone nodding at you from across the room and immediately looking at their phone.

Every fav I’ve ever received on something I cared about made me a little sadder than silence would have. At least silence is honest. The star performs acknowledgment while withholding it—the social media equivalent of "we should catch up sometime."

What I wanted was simple: Twitter removes the fav button. Not rebrands it, not moves it—deletes it. Forces people to reply, share, or do nothing, any of which is more honest than that small, cowardly, self-satisfied little star. An entire generation of cynical, lonely internet addicts would have been grateful.