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Twitter's emoji reactions might solve its 'heart' problem

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twitter testing emoji reactions ninji
_Ninji/Twitter
Up until now, we’ve been limited to the star (R.I.P.) and the newly unveiled heart on Twitter if we wanted to react to a tweet. While the star seemed to work sufficiently (as a means of actually favoriting tweets, simply acknowledging someone else’s tweets, or casually ending conversations without actually tweeting, “Okay, bye now”) many users were still unsure of what they were saying when they pressed the star button. Recently, and not long after Twitter’s new heart added to the confusion, a user came across what allegedly appears to be Twitter testing emoji reactions as a way to interact with tweets.

Twitter user @_Ninji recently tweeted what looks to be a line of emoji reactions to choose from when the heart isn’t exactly the emotion you are going for. According to the tweet, choices include the party noisemaker, the “100” symbol, and for especially infuriating tweets, the face with steam coming out of its nose. In a comment to The Verge, the user said the emoji reactions were accessed through a jailbroken version of the app.

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It wouldn’t be surprising if Twitter is in fact working on alternatives to its new heart button, considering the recent backlash that occurred when the star was itself quietly replaced by the heart (a.k.a. “like”) button. At the beginning of the month, the new heart left many users ambivalent about how “liking” a tweet, as opposed to just favoriting it, might be perceived, and the change was seen as forcing users to completely change how they interact with others. Also, Facebook’s plan to add emoji to its own line of reactions has long been in the works, in response to the same limitations users experience when obliged to press something that might indicate happiness or agreement when that wasn’t their intention.

However, @_Ninji also mentioned that the Twitter emoji reactions function appeared to be far from complete, so as it turns out, we’re stuck with the heart for now.

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Christina Majaski
Christina Majaski
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