Actor Mark Hamill is best known for his role as Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars franchise. Hamill could soon be known as the guy who has changed the way people like something on social media platform X.
What Happened: Hamill has spoken out publicly against social media platform X and its owner Elon Musk.
The actor took a one-day break from the social media platform after Musk rebranded the company from Twitter to X and changed the company logo.
Musk, who acquired Twitter for $44 billion, recently made likes hidden for users and Hamill is not a fan.
Hamill has been seen commenting on peoples’ X posts with "like" or "likes" and in some cases retweeting the post with "like" or "likes" in his retweet.
The actor has included the hashtag #BringBackLikes in several posts and agreed with one user who shared a screenshot showing the "likes" comments from Hamill and suggesting to Musk that the actor has better things to do with his time.
"Agreed. It's only been one day & I'm already exhausted," Hamill said.
For anyone questioning why Hamill is taking the time to comment "like" to make it visible to all X users, he had an explanation.
"I WANT people to know it was me that liked their tweets. Now my only option is to reply & write the word ‘like.' This will seriously cut into my time wishing folks a (Happy Birthday)! How can we get the powers-that-be to STOP ‘improving’ this site?"
In case you were wondering, yes Hamill does comment "like" on some of his own tweets as well.
Related Link: EXCLUSIVE: 67% Of X Users Don’t Pay For Elon Musk’s New Premium Plans, Poll Reveals
Why It's Important: Musk recently said the change was made so that people could not see what others were liking on the platform in fear of retaliation.
"Important to allow people to like posts without getting attacked for doing so," Musk said.
X's Director of Engineering Haofei Wang said the goal of removing public likes was to protect users' public images.
Users can still like posts and see who liked their posts and the like count, but others will not be able to see the usernames of those who like a post.
"Public likes are incentivizing the wrong behavior. For example, many people feel discouraged from liking content that might be ‘edgy' in fear of retaliation from trolls or to protect their public image," Wang said.
Changes to X have been swift since Musk took over and many of the changes see equal levels of pushback and posititivity from users.
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