Twitter has confirmed plans to trial a dislike button.
The social network, which last week announced it was to discontinue its controversial Fleets experiment, has confirmed that it’s “exploring” the option of a dislike button to the app.
Now, the company has revealed some iOS users will be able to access the button as part of a trial.
On iOS, some users will see upvote and downvote options on tweets, and though these metrics won’t be shown publicly, they serve as an internal metric and allow tweet owners to see the numbers of likes/dislikes their tweet replies received, perhaps as a way to filter out good debate from bad.
Some key notes about this experiment:
1. This is just a test for research right now.
2. This is not a dislike button.
3. Your downvotes are visible to you only.
4. Votes won’t change the order of replies.— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) July 21, 2021
Twitter says that it wants to ” understand the types of replies you find relevant,” and confirmed to one user that “dislikes aren’t public or visible to the author, while Likes are. They both help us understand what people think is valuable to the conversation.”
The company is reportedly testing a number of designs for the feature, such as upvotes and downvotes like Reddit, likes and dislikes such as Facebook, and a classic heart with a downvote button.
What are your thoughts on this experiment? Is it something you’d be interested in using? Let us know and check back soon for more news and announcements from the social network, here on AppleMagazine.