"As we've been saying for a while, we are rethinking everything about the service to ensure we are incentivising healthy conversation, that includes the like button," the company said on its communications team's Twitter feed on Monday. "We are in the early stages of the work and have no plans to share right now."

Twitter, like Facebook, has had to focus on countering manipulation of their platform including the removal of fake accounts following Russian influence on their sites during and since the US presidential campaign.

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Dorsey recently appeared before US Congress to detail how the network was dealing with those issues, as well as to answer criticism that it suppresses conservative voices.

Beyond that, there's concern that the loudest, and most agitative, voices are rewarded on Twitter with likes and retweets.

Dorsey has voiced concerns about that issue recently.

"What does the service currently incentivise?" Dorsey said earlier this month at an event for Wired magazine.

"Right now we have a big 'like' button with a heart on it and we're incentivising people to want it to go up" and to get more followers, he pointed out.

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"Is that the right thing? Versus contributing to the public conversation or a healthy conversation? How do we incentive healthy conversation?"

That's a tack he reiterated during the company's third-quarter earnings conference call with analysts last week.

"We have every team around the company thinking about increasing health of the public conversation," Dorsey said. "We're actually questioning some of the fundamentals and the incentives that the service is providing, and making sure that they are also encouraging and increasing healthy conversation on the service as well."

McClatchy