Twitter Still Considering “Dislike” Button

Test of the feature expanding

The Pulse

Twitter has been considering adding a downvote feature for quite a while, but now the company appears to be serious about it. On Thursday (February 3rd), Twitter said it will be expanding the availability of the downvote button on replies globally, after testing the feature in a limited number of countries. The feature was originally launched in July 2021, and Twitter had teased something similar for years before that. But, the downvote button comes with several limitations. First, it’s only available in replies, not posts. Second, the downvotes aren’t public (though Twitter says the data will “help inform us of the content people want to see.”), and third—the downvote button is coming to the desktop version of Twitter first, though the company says it will start showing up on iOS and Android “soon.” So far, Twitter says people who have used the downvote button used the feature to flag content they don’t want to see, and they mostly did it when they perceived a reply as being offensive, not relevant, or both.