If you’ve always wanted to react to tweets you see on your timeline with an emoji reaction, you might have been excited by the leak that they are testing it out with some users. Unfortunately, the leak was only partially true. Yes, they did test it out last year but apparently they have already stopped doing so. There were just some leftover codes and so that’s what the tipster saw. Twitter however did not say what the results of that test was and so we do not know if we will actually see this feature soon.
Reliable tipster and app researcher Jane Manchun Wong tweeted a screenshot of what looked to be a tweet-reaction interface that lets you retweet, retweet with comment and then some emoji reactions underneath which we assume you could react to the tweet with. There was even a React with Fleet option, although for now the ephemeral Stories-like Fleets is only available in Brazil, Italy, and recently India.
Twitter is working on Tweet Reactions…? pic.twitter.com/3Sb6c8cYe3
— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) June 10, 2020
However, someone from Twitter later on replied to her and said that they did test it out last year but some of the code was left in there unintentionally. It wasn’t exactly an emoji reaction feature but it was an option to quote tweet with a reaction instead of just a simple retweet. Unfortunately, they did not say whether that will be a future feature since they have finished the test already.
The Verge says that a simple emoji reaction, similar to what we have in the Direct Messages, would have been a great feature to have especially now that we can choose who can reply to our tweets. If a user has restricted the replies to their tweets, it would have been nice to still be able to react to something someone said or posted and emoji reaction like this could have been that option.
But all is not lost and we might still see something like this in the future. But for now, Twitter seems to be more focused on helping lessen the spread of misinformation on their platform.
