Twitter announced this week that is already doing global tests for its new button downvote, an equivalent of “I don’t like it”, to a select group of users. The company said it had received a “positive response” from its initial experiments last July. “We’ve learned a lot about the types of answers that don’t seem relevant to you and we’re expanding this test: more of you on the web and soon on iOS and Android will have the option to downvote answers,” the company said in a statement. Tweet.
Some of you on iOS may see different options to up or down vote on replies. We’re testing this to understand the types of replies you find relevant in a convo, so we can work on ways to show more of them.
Your downvotes aren’t public, while your upvotes will be shown as likes. pic.twitter.com/hrBfrKQdcY
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— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) July 21, 2021
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Twitter said that, as before, the number of downvotes that receives a response will not be visible to the public, and downvotes of users will only be visible to them. In the first round of testing, Twitter offered different versions of downvoting: some saw the buttons upvote Y downvote, while others only saw the button downvote next to the heart/like option. A third version showed testers the thumbs up and thumbs down buttons. Twitter has not said whether the new global tests will offer the same options.
The company revealed that most users “clicked the down arrow…because the answer was perceived as offensive, or because they perceived it as not relevant, or both.” The downvoting it also became the most used way for people to flag content they don’t want to see, the company added.
If you browse Reddit, you know that the website has used the downvotes since its inception in 2005, as mentioned in a tweet responding to the initial Twitter experiment. Facebook also tested the downvotes in 2018, but it never became a permanent feature. Instagram, for its part, allows users to hide likes as a way to remove some of the negative pressure associated with the service.
The likes, the dislikes, the downvotes and reaction emojis are often cited by social media critics as features that can make conversations better or more toxic. So far, according to Twitter, the experiment has been positive. “The people who have tried the downvoting agree that it improves the quality of conversations on Twitter,” said Twitter Safety. “We’re excited to see what others have to say as it becomes available to more people.”
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