Twitter Is Testing Out A Downvote Feature

Goodbye fleets, hello downvotes.

Almost exactly one week after admitting that its fledgling fleet feature was a bust, Twitter has revealed its latest experiment: an upvote and downvote feature. The feature has reportedly already started hitting some iOS user’s applications, and those lucky Twitter users will be able to react to Tweet replies by upvoting it, which automatically translates to a like, or downvoting it, which will show Twitter developers the type of content that the user doesn’t want to see.

Judging by the pictures provided by Twitter, the feature may be presented as two adjacent circles with up and down arrows inside of them, a traditional heart positioned by a circle with a down arrow inside of it, or a Facebook-esque thumbs up and thumbs down.

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And just in case you may have thought that Twitter’s new feature sounded a lot like a dislike button, the beloved social media platform has come forward to explain why that’s not necessarily true.

Thanks to Twitter Support, the company has shared some insights about the new test, writing, “Some key notes about this experiment: 1. This is just a test for research right now. 2. This is not a dislike button. 3. Your downvotes are visible to you only. 4. Votes won’t change the order of replies.”

Although Twitter has confirmed that this is just a part of its recent research methods, would you like for the social media platform to permanently include a dislike option for other user’s tweets and replies?