Twitter move to use hearts instead of favs upsets the site’s own employees

Describing the new wording as ‘loaded’, senior engineers have publicly criticised the move

Many users were affected after the social network succumbed to one of its trademark outages (Bethany Clarke/Getty Images)

Twitter’s own employees are criticising their company’s decision to drop favs and change to hearts.

The site has changed from using stars represented by favs to using “likes” represented by little hearts. Twitter claimed that the change was intended to stop newcomers getting confused, since it might not be clear what a favourite is.

But engineer Peter Seibel said that the site had chosen a term that was loaded, abandoning what he described as the “neutral” wording of the old tool.

Mr Seibel describes himself on LinkedIn as a senior staff engineer at Twitter. He has been in that position since April 2015, joining the company as a staff engineer exactly two years before that.

Others outside of Twitter have made the same criticism. While it was possible to fav bad stories to note them for later or make clear that they had been seen, some have worried that the heart-shaped like button makes it look as if users’ are approving of the content.

Some responding to Mr Seibel worried that he might be fired for expressing his opinion in a public setting.

But since Twitter has been known to be testing the hearts with some users before its wide launch, it’s likely that Mr Seibel had been aware of the change long before it was rolled out.