Twitter adds new dislike button but with a catch

September 2022 · 2 minute read

Twitter has slowly rolled out a dislike button for some users, with the caveat that the number of downvotes the post has is invisible.

Twitter has added many crucial features since its release all the way back in 2006 such as pinned tweets, Twitter highlights, and a native GIF search all in-app.

The social media giant is now rolling out a new feature that allows users to downvote tweets they don’t like.

Twitter’s new downvote feature is being rolled out to a very limited number of users.

Twitter’s new downvote feature

On October 12, a select few users on Twitter began noticing a new feature that allows them to downvote replies.

The feature came with a disclaimer box that said, “We’re testing downvoting on replies. This isn’t public for visible to the author – it will help us understand what people think is valuable to the conversation.”

why did twitter think that this was a better idea than editing ur tweets🤦‍♂️ pic.twitter.com/9Zoi2gxy97

— Spooky Breaker🎃 (@BreakerFNM) October 12, 2021

For now, it seems that Twitter is only allowing downvotes to be tested on replies and not the original tweets, and keeping the stats away from public view.

One user commented about the changes and said, “Oh wonderful, we’ll turn into Reddit, where the echo chamber reigns supreme. Twitter is bad about group think too, but this will just make it worse.”

….downvoting? This is Twitter, not Reddit… pic.twitter.com/LWvMfZAWtt

— 💙Demon Beast 5FT💙pinned (@imonly5feet) October 12, 2021

It is unclear if the feature will ever come to non-reply tweets, but the new change certainly has users wondering if Twitter will slowly become Reddit if downvoting becomes a permanent feature. The difference of course being that users won’t be able to see how many downvotes a reply has.

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