Twitter Starts Testing Upvote and Downvote Buttons on Tweets
Jul. 22, 2021After copyingInstagram Stories with fleetsandshutting it down last week, Twitter is nowtestingReddit-like upvotes and downvotes for tweets. The test is currently live on Twitter’s iOS app for some users.
Unlike Reddit, downvote counts are not public on Twitter – at least, not at the moment. As a result, other Twitter users can’t see if you downvoted a tweet or the total number of downvotes on a specific tweet. The upvote button, on the other hand, will replicate the current “Like” functionality.
Twitter also clarifies thatvotes won’t change the order of repliesyou see on a tweet. At this point, you might be questioning the relevance of this test. Well, according to the company, this is a test to “understand the types of replies you find relevant in a convo, so we can work on ways to show more of them.”Even before Twitter announced the test, the dislike button was first spotted by Twitter user @iglehart967.
“In this research experiment, the thumbs down icon is a downvote that lets us know that you think the reply isn’t relevant to the conversation. We want to better understand the types of replies you do and don’t find relevant in a convo,”wrotethe company in response to a user’s query.
Upvote and downvote buttons are not the only tools Twitter is testing to potentially make the user experience better. The company was also spottedtestingFacebook-style tweet reactions a few months back. It will be interesting to see if Twitter ends up adopting the Facebook or Reddit way to tackle all unpopular opinions and hate speech prevalent in the platform.
Subin writes about consumer tech, software, and security. He secretly misses the headphone jack while pretending he’s better off with the wireless freedom.
