Social media platforms are known to draw inspiration from their peers. Be it Stories, Drop-in chat, Short videos, Threads etc., we’ve seen numerous examples where popular features from the competitors are happily adopted.
Twitter has now confirmed that it is testing a new feature that lets you downvote a particular tweet in case you do not agree with the thought or idea shared online. These downvotes will not be visible to the public, however, upvotes or like will remain visible to the public.
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/hrBfrKQdcYJuly 21, 2021
A small set of users have been selected for this trial and we can see how the feature may look like once it is rolled out to the public, thanks to some enthusiastic users sharing the screenshots online.
Just a test
Twitter, though, has clarified that it’s a part of research as of now and there is no surety if this feature will be rolled out to the public. The downvote, as it seems, is similar to what we’ve seen Reddit using for years now, however, Twitter clarifies that it is not a dislike button.
Additionally, Twitter has also confirmed that the downvotes will not impact the algorithm that decides the order of replies. Hence, as of now the sole purpose of adding a downvote is to give readers an additional option to react to a tweet.
To recall, Twitter is already testing a flurry of Facebook-like reactions namely – Likes, Cheer, Hmm, Sad, Haha and this new trial could be an extension to the same test. The only difference though these reactions do not have an option for the users to let you know that they didn’t like your tweet.
The Micro-blogging platform has been adding quite a few features to improve the user experience. And while it has been struggling to increase its user base comparatively, it is also looking to empower content creators and influencers to earn extra money from the platform and help it retain the existing users while attracting new ones too.
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