A Like Can’t Go Anywhere, But a Compliment Can Go a Long Way by Frank Chimero

An interesting look at the effects of UI design. What do you think culture would look like if we reversed these UIs? Praise required words while negativity was easily accessible via a single interaction? Who knows. Could be different. But also humans are humans and it could be the same.

First, a look at Facebook’s UI:

one negative reply literally takes up more visual space than tens of thousands of undifferentiated likes.

Then Twitter’s:

The arrangement is even worse on Twitter. Liking stays attached to the original tweet and makes most positive interactions static. Negative reactions must be written as tweets, creating more material for the machine. These negative tweets can spread through retweets and further replies. This means negativity grows in number and presence, because most positivity on the service is silent and immobilized.

Positivity is “silent and immobilized’. What an fascinating assessment—and the result of this?

like can’t go anywhere, but a compliment can go a long way. Passive positivity isn’t enough; active positivity is needed to counterbalance whatever sort of collective conversations and attention we point at social media. Otherwise, we are left with the skewed, inaccurate, and dangerous nature of what’s been built: an environment where most positivity is small, vague, and immobile, and negativity is large, precise, and spreadable.