Twitter is about to get messy!
According to Complex, the social media platform has announced that it will test a “dislike” button in order to improve conversations held on the platform.
Chatter about the new feature began on July 21 after select users began to receive messages from Twitter that confirmed that they could now dislike or “downvote” tweet replies.
The company also reassured users that their downvotes would be totally anonymous and not visible to the public. On the other hand, Twitter says that this feature will help them to “understand what people think is valuable to the conversations.”
More details were provided by the Twitter Support account which said that only select iOS users would be able to view the option for “upvotes” and “downvotes” which currently are displayed as “likes.”
“Some of you on iOS may see different options to up or down vote on replies,” read the tweet. “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.”
This new feature may be new to Twitter but isn’t completely uncommon on social platforms online. Reddit has had a similar function in place for years. Redditors are allowed to determine which posts are relevant to a subreddit through their down-and upvote buttons.
Plus, Reddit has taken a somewhat “Soulja Boy approach” since Twitter’s announcement by seemingly letting the world know that they were the first online platform to have the feature at hand.
— Reddit (@Reddit) July 21, 2021
The new function comes on the heels of Twitter’s announcement to say goodbye to their new Fleets function on Aug. 3.
Fleets were created as a way to allow people to share their fleeting thoughts and the company shared that while they hoped that the new tool would help people feel more comfortable joining conversations on Twitter, it did not perform as well as they thought it would.