Why Twitter's new hearts are stressing people out

Star become heart, favorites become likes, and Twitter loses its mind. I'm Bridget Carey, this is your cnet update. [MUSIC] There are Several wild tech stories to talk about today but let's start with one stirring up social media controversy. Twitter made a change to its network that's making long time users angry. The star icon to indicate you favorite a Tweet Is now a heart icon to say that you like it. You may wonder why anyone cares that an icon changed but the problem some have is that not everything deserves a love symbol. The star was a neutral way of acknowledging you appreciated a post But with hearts the meaning could change crossing over into some possibly awkward territory. But today in social media we are throwing hearts all over the place. The icon is losing all romantic meaning anyway. Instagram uses hearts as likes. On Twitter's periscope people pour strings of hearts on tops of videos. Twitter's also changing Vine so that it uses hearts instead of smiley faces, to make everything hearts. Twitter is doing this because it thinks new users will not understand stars. Yeah, that's what scares me. What is happening to society that companies think we can no longer understand stars? It says that the executives go into meetings believing that by communicating with heart imogee More people will use their network. And Google thinks we can no longer answer email for ourselves. Yeah, Google's artificial intelligence is now able to offer suggestions on how to reply to your email. Based on what questions someone is asking you. So yeah, it's reading your e-mail. Will you RSVP? Google suggests answers that say, I'll be there, or that I won't make it. Is anyone looking into this? Quickly reply with I'll check on it or I'm on it. This feature is rolling out to Google Inbox app on Android and iOS this week. During early tests, Google found the machine kept wanting to reply I love you as an option to everything. But it's working out those quirks. You should still read through your email before using a quick reply so you don't accidentally tell your boss that you love him. Meanwhile, Microsoft is going back on its promise to give Office 365 subscribers unlimited online storage in OneDrive. In a blog post, Microsoft says some people were abusing the unlimited storage, so now, subscribers only get one terabyte for free. But I have a hard time buying the abuse excuse, because Microsoft is cutting back on plans everywhere. For two bucks a month you could a hundred gigs of storage but next year two dollars will only buy you half that, fifty gigs. Also, everyone got fifteen gigs for free when they backed up their photos but that's also being cut back. Only five gigs free for everyone current and new starting next year. Microsoft will be sending out notices if you are using more space than is now permitted. Warn you that you have a limited amount of time to access your files. That's it for this tech news update. There's more at cnet.com. From our studios in New York, I'm Bridget Carey. [MUSIC]