Twitter is Experimenting with a Dislike Button [Photos]

BY: Walker

Published 3 years ago

It appears that Twitter is in the early stages of testing a dislike/downvote button for some users on iOS.

via: Revolt

In screenshots of Twitter support messages that surfaced on Wednesday (July 21), it’s confirmed that the platform is testing the “dislike” option on replies to tweets. The users who post the replies won’t be able to see the dislikes, and the dislikes themselves aren’t visible to the public, but Twitter says they are using the information to “help us understand what people think is valuable to the conversation.”

Advertisement

In a statement they released on Wednesday, Twitter confirms that select users have been granted the ability to give up votes or down votes to certain tweets they see on the platform.

“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,” Twitter says of their experiment. “Your downvotes aren’t public, while your upvotes will be shown as likes.”

If Twitter ever does fully implement dislikes and voting options for tweets, there would be a lot of discussions about the moves. On one hand, a lot of people would prefer Twitter just gave them an edit button. After all, there are few things more annoying than a stupid mistake in an otherwise fire tweet. Then, of course, there’s the matter of whether people need more ways to disapprove of what someone is saying online.

This news arrives days after Twitter announced that they would be discontinuing fleets, an Instagram story-esque feature that allowed users to post images of themselves or their tweets to a space where people could look at them off the timeline. In a blog post they published last week, Twitter explained their decision to have the feature removed from the platform.

Advertisement

“We built fleets as a lower-pressure, ephemeral way for people to share their fleeting thoughts,” reads one part of the post. “We hoped fleets would help more people feel comfortable joining the conversation on Twitter. But, in the time since we introduced fleets to everyone, we haven’t seen an increase in the number of new people joining the conversation with fleets like we hoped. Because of this, on Aug. 3, fleets will no longer be available on Twitter.”

Considering the way fleets played out, it’s clear that these tests Twitter goes through are just that; tests to evaluate interest in a new elements potentially being added to the site.

Advertisement

I personally will use the dislike button more than the fleets.

Share This Post