Twitter (X) had another ‘moment’ recently, where the company under Musk completely removed the ability to see who had liked posts, and the ‘likes’ tab from user pages.
It was an extremely questionable choice truth be told; without the ability to see what someone is liking, it’s difficult to imagine how likes are now any different from the separate ‘bookmarks’ function, which are also hidden to users. Now, a third-party developer has brought back likes in a, shall we say, interesting way: by adding the ‘Yeah!’ button from the Nintendo Wii U Miiverse app.
So that’s a whole lot of strange, so let me get you caught up. Twitter removed the ability to see what people had liked, and people were annoyed. Twitter’s userbase loves to make some noise when it’s annoyed, and so to make up for the lack of public likes, people started to include an image of the Nintendo Wii U Miiverse ‘Yeah!’ react.
They removed likes
— Pineapple (@DreamyWeegee) June 12, 2024
Can I get a Yeah! instead pic.twitter.com/T2b17l1qKH
Having this as a reply is basically a declaration that the respondent has ‘liked’ a post, but there’s two problems. One, it appears as a reply, and two, it’s so, so spammy. Seriously; ever since users started doing this, navigating the replies to posts has been an absolute nightmare, with it filled up with these Yeah reactions.
At least sometimes you’ll see a cute variation on the yeah button – that’s my favourite part of all this mess; seeing fandoms produce their own spins on what is genuinely a cute reaction.
— Little Kitty, Big City 🐈 🏙️ OUT NOW!! (@LittleKittyGame) June 15, 2024
That is quite lost in all of this, by the way – it’s meant to be an innocent reaction, native to the Wii U social media Miiverse. On that, the Yeah! reaction took the place of likes, though it was shut down in 2017.
To alleviate the spam, extension developer @d1mden made their own ‘Yeah!’ button. It’s available for Chromium browsers, with a Firefox version also available. ‘Yeah!’ reacts are added to an opt-in shared database, through which you can see what other people have Yeah-ed to.
I’ve made an extension that adds Yeah! button that doesn’t spam replies! It uses a shared database, and everyone can see who Yeahed a tweet and see Yeahs of a user.
— dimden (@d1mden) June 16, 2024
Get it for Chrome/Edge/Opera/Brave/Vivaldi/etc.: https://t.co/DagvtKyewF pic.twitter.com/N1hOYqA0lW
“Its funny to see ppl asking me to make yeah button also post image when the reason i made this extension in first place is so that people stop with spam,” Dimdem said on Twitter (X). If you remember their name, by the way, it’s because they’re also the dev of Old Twitter layout.
For yous Australians pic.twitter.com/Z3CUDtvUWD
— LUMOZZE (@Lumozze) June 16, 2024
This extension rocks, I’ve been using it since I first saw it go up yesterday. Nice one, Dimdem.
Image: Nintendo