Twitter Changed The Color Of The Like Button

About

Twitter Changed The Color Of The Like Button is a frequently repeated joke and troll on Twitter in which one user posts that Twitter has supposedly "changed the color of the like button," leading other users to test whether the like button color has indeed changed and in the process give the original poster a like. The method of trolling users for likes is not exclusive to Twitter, with other variations existing elsewhere on social media, but the joke has been commonly used on the platform over the years.

Origin

Twitter has pushed various changes to its user interface in the past. Notably, the "like" button used to be a "favorite" button represented by a yellow star, but in 2015, it was changed into a heart-shaped "like" button.^[1]

In October 2021, many users posted (apparently truthfully, according to replies) that the hue of the heart-shaped "like" button had changed from red to reddish pink, and many seemed to agree the change had taken place, including this tweet from October 10th, 2021, by user @Karabo_Mokgoko (seen below), which received over 16,500 likes in eight months.^[2] However, Twitter did not put out an official comment on this purported change.

The earliest obviously false instance of the like button gag occurred on March 2nd, 2020, in a tweet (seen below) put out by Twitter user @PxrisOfficial, which received just two likes over two years.^[3]

Spread

Several gags alleging that the Twitter like button's color had changed spread across the platform over the next few months after PxrisOfficial's tweet, continuing throughout the early 2020s as a reoccurring troll.

June 2021 Protests in Nigeria

On June 12th, 2021, posters in Nigeria tweeted that the button purportedly changed to green as a show of support for protestors against Muhammad Buhari's government, including this tweet posted on June 12th by Twitter user @davidchibike (seen below), which received almost 1,200 likes in a year.^[4]

This was not true, however, and led to many Nigerian supporters of the protests to condemn those who had posted the viral meme, such as supporter and Twitter user @PapaRiri9, who called out the spreaders of the hoax and received over 40 likes in one year.^[5]

Elon Musk Purchasing Twitter 2022

Following Elon Musk's announcement that he planned to purchase Twitter in 2022, the joke picked up a considerable amount of steam as posters tweeted about Musk changing the color of the Twitter heart. Tweets falsely claiming Musk had changed the color circulated widely through spring and summer 2022. For example, Twitter user @Chooka2K posted one such version on May 28th, 2022, and received almost 300,000 likes over the course of three weeks.^[6]

Various Examples

External References