Twitter is finally working on a ‘dislike’ button, sort of

Twitter finally heard our pleas.

What you need to know

• Twitter is testing a dislike button on its platform.
• The new upvotes and downvotes will have a few different styles and only apply to tweet responses.
• Downvotes won’t show publicly but will be visible to the original tweeter.
• The test is currently rolling out for some iOS users.

Twitter has announced that it’s started testing letting users dislike tweets with a new upvote/downvote system.

The company says that the new system will appear in a few different styles and will be used as a way to figure out the kinds of responses Twitter users like. The company also says that dislikes or “downvotes” aren’t shown publicly and that the original Tweeter won’t be notified of them but will still be able to see them.

Some of you on iOS may see different options to up or down vote on replies. 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. pic.twitter.com/hrBfrKQdcY

— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) July 21, 2021

“Upvotes,” on the other hand, will be treated as likes, meaning you’ll be notified as you normally are.

Twitter clarifies that the downvote button isn’t a dislike button and that it’s strictly for research purposes.

In this research experiment, the thumbs down icon is a down vote that lets us know that you think the reply isn’t relevant to the conversation.

That said, it appears that downvotes are limited to tweet responses, not the original tweet itself. Additionally, votes won’t alter the order of responses like platforms such as Reddit function with a similar voting structure, although, given the nature of the test, it sounds like that could be in the works.

A dislike button has been a requested feature on Twitter and other platforms for some time. Many people hoped to see one the Facebook news feed, but the platform took a different approach and rolled out several different reactions, something that Twitter has been spotted testing as well.

After recently announcing the end of its Fleets experiment, Twitter stated that it would continue testing ways to get more people tweeting and engaging in conversations. This appears to be one of those tests and could prove popular.

Unfortunately, the test is only available for some iOS users, meaning anyone rocking any of the best Android phones will miss out.

Now if only Twitter would test and release the ability to edit a tweet.