# If there's one thing I really like about the Member's homepage on Medium it's that there are no hearts visible until you go in to a story. This stops pointless liking without reading.
Putting an end to minimum social actions
We love social media for the quick-fire dopamine hits it gives us although we know they are largely worthless.
We just don't want to admit it.
Likes, hearts, +1s, retweets, re-blogs, however we receive these "plaudits", they are the minimum viable social action: completely disposable and, in most cases, reliant on no other interaction to initiate.
When someone shares a link we can like or spread it without clicking, without knowing what it contains or what we are associating ourselves with.
But that is exactly what we are doing.
We are aligning ourselves with the unknown. Let that sink in for a moment.
Although many say in their bios that a retweet or re-share does not constitute agreement or support, unless they explicitly state that for each instance, the assumption is made and they are personally linked to that content.
It amazes me how many do it without considering or even realising the reputational damage it could do.
And, while, as the sharer, it's nice to get the "support" it is hollow.
Need for change
One thing I particularly like about the new Member's homepage on Medium is that there is not a single heart icon to be seen anywhere.
While it might seem like a small thing, and sound like a stats junky's idea of Dante's seventh circle of hell, this is actually quite a major deal.
At least it is for me.
One thing I used to enjoy with Google+ was that there was no automation, no way to cross-post from another network.
Every post or share had to be an explicit, considered action. What you chose to do with it was up to you.
So, why is having no hearts on the Medium homepage such a big deal?
It tries to reassert the notion of value, which is what the whole membership drive is trying to generate.
Items can't be recommended straight from the "feed" without at least being opened. What happens next is, again, up to the individual but the implication is that to recommend an item it has to be worth something.
The time must be invested to determine that worth.
Slow down
What if other social properties adopted a similar approach? What if Twitter insisted you followed a shared link before allowing you to like it or retweet? What about Facebook?
What if social networks actually made you slow down and think about what you were doing, what you were "agreeing to" and the implications that might have?
I'm not suggesting it would fix the problems we currently have but it could make a difference. The spread of abuse and misinformation could be slowed by the introduction of friction into the process. Bots solely used for trolling could potentially be silenced.
Okay, so people might get fewer likes but those they did get would be more sincere, more meaningful and that is a far better metric than numbers alone.
But it won't happen.
Networks rely on the feed's relentless pace to generate the rush that keeps people coming back.
Sanity always loses in a numbers game.
Liked: On Likes, Faves and Sharing – BalancedLight… Likes, favourites, whatever we call them, definitely need to be more deliberate. No more “minimum social actions!”
<a href="https://colinwalker.blog/2017/06/11/11062017-2105/">→ 11/06/2017 9:06pm</a>John shared a post by Doc Searls from back in February that I had missed - Doc blogs in a couple of different places and this was one I didn't have in my feed reader. In it Doc shares his thoughts about blogging now in contrast with how it used to be at the "dawn of blogging's golden age." A couple of points really connected with me. Firstly, he remarks that this "age" "seems to have come and gone: not away, but... somewhere." I'm not sure if that's wishful thinking or an allusion to a recent rekindling in old school blogging, people trying to get back to how they used to write and interact, having got temporarily lost in the social age. This leads to the next point which struck home:
He goes on:
This is exactly how I feel the landscape has changed, and as I've mentioned before. The chances were that much of our readership also used to be bloggers so the author/reader relationship was widely reciprocated. Even those that weren't bloggers used to be heavily engaged, regular commenters who would leave substantial replies to posts. It was common to say that the comment sections on blogs were just as, if not more, valuable than the posts themselves. Such was the care, thought and consideration put into them. You felt like you knew your readers and those bloggers, in turn, that you were a reader of. But social killed much of that. Social platforms claim to be powered by engagement but it's the wrong kind of engagement, the minimum social actions which are more advertisements for presence and "me too" curation fodder showing off the supposed breadth of someone's reading. It's ironic that the more we are supposedly connected the more distant we become. Perhaps we are widening the circles of acquaintanceship too far. We used to focus on our comment sections and those of a select number of blogs we subscribed to, and the intimacy we experienced with our core contributors gave a real sense of community. That feeling is often replicated in the early days of new platforms and services when user numbers are low and you would see the same names and avatars all the time. Think Twitter, FriendFeed, Buzz, Google+ - even though it was called a wasteland the initial sense of community was amazing. Each had that "new frontier" aesthetic for their devotees; the untamed badlands to be shaped in our image until they, the great unwashed, discovered it and suddenly the quaint little settlement, where everybody knew everyone else, became full of noise and traffic and strangers. You can't argue when Doc says that it's "harder to blog when there is very little sense of connection anywhere outside of tweets and retweets, which all have the permanence of snow falling on water." Such a powerful statement. But I keep coming back to the notion that the golden age has not gone away, but... somewhere! Where exactly? Doc says he's "not sure yet" but I think he's got an inkling which is why he phrases it in such a way. Here's what I think: The where is with those like himself who, despite it all, kept posting to their blogs even if the engagement wasn't there because it was what they understood and believed in. It's with the backlash against the new tribalism of social networks, the desire to return to proper conversations rather than playground name calling and increasingly dangerous rhetoric. It's with those who strive for an open, connected web allowing people to express themselves outside the walls and control of silos and corporate control. There are pockets of "where" spread across the web - we just need to find them.