Twitter testing downvotes with select users on iPhone

Some Twitter users on iOS will soon see the option to downvote or upvote replies to tweets.

The social media company announced the change via its Twitter Support account (@TwitterSupport). Further, Twitter said that it was testing upvotes and downvotes to “understand the types of replies you find relevant in a convo, so we can work on ways to show more of them.”

https://twitter.com/TwitterSupport/status/1417920469265788931?s=20

Twitter also noted that downvotes won’t be public, while the network will show upvotes as likes.

Although Twitter wants to use up and down votes as a way to understand the relevance of replies, voting won’t impact what users see in their feed yet. The feature differs from, say, Reddit, which offers up and down voting. Voting on content helps surface popular content from different communities.

Twitter is testing Dislike buttons 👎

(via @iglehart97) pic.twitter.com/7TRAb5LlzT

— ScreenTime (@screentime) July 21, 2021

That said, if Twitter chooses to make up/down voting a permanent addition, it could change the way people use Twitter and what people see on Twitter. Downvotes could be a way to train Twitter’s algorithms to not show you specific content, without necessarily unfollowing or blocking users. Alternatively, downvoting could be a great way to express disagreement with a particularly poor take.

I’m interested to see how this particular experiment plays out.