If you are an iOS Twitter user, you would have come across the new Twitter downvote buttons replacing the dislike button. This is part of the micro-blogging site’s new experiment in making it better by understanding the most and the least relevant replies by the users. Twitter has finally begun testing after the company revealed the launch of the dislike button last year. This feature is currently available for a small group of iOS users.
Twitter Downvote/Dislike button testing process:
The test group is going to see three different versions of it- one with the heart icon (like) and the downvote button, the second group with the upvote and downvote buttons, and the third version with buttons of thumbs up and thumbs down. According to the company, the downvotes aren’t public, but the upvotes will be shown as the number of likes.
About the downvote button, “This isn’t quite a dislike button. In this research experiment, the thumb down icon is a downvote that lets us know that you think that the reply is not relevant to the conversation. We want to better understand the types of replies you do and don’t find relevant in a convo”, said the company. The downvote will be visible to the person who posted the tweet only and is limited to tweet responses only.
It is still unknown about the Android available testers and making this feature as a permanent one like that on YouTube for over ten years. The same downvote option is due for Facebook. Twitter also confirms that this option is not the similar one Reddit uses for displaying the most upvoted replies, posts, and responses. It clears that the downvotes won’t change the order of replies, remaining unimpacted. Twitter user Researcher Cody Elam explains the downvote option as giving “people the power to privately voice their opinion on the quality of the replies”, giving the company more nuanced feedback.
