Twitter Is Trialling A Dislike Button

While the likes of Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter are usually about trying to promote positivity, Twitter is testing out a divisive new feature and could soon include a dislike button for you to share your views.

At the moment, Twitter's heart-shaped like button is the only way to show what you think about someone's tweet - well, aside from tearing it apart in the comments.

With reply sections often being filled with some helpful and not-so-helpful commentary, Twitter is trialling a dislike button on replies.

What is the Twitter dislike button?

The official Twitter support account confirmed the existence of the downvote ability, but reiterated this is NOT a dislike button. We're no experts, but it sure looks like one to us. At the moment, some iOS users will be trialling the option to upvote or downvote on tweets. Although upvotes will be shown as likes, downvotes will not be visible publicly.

There's the implication that the "dislike button" is just for internal metrics, however, it will be interesting to see the next step. According to Twitter, the trial is to "understand the types of replies you find relevant". Those who are part of the test will be greeted with the following message on the Twitter iOS app: "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". 

Several designs are being teased right now, including a downvote symbol similar to Reddit and an actual dislike button that looks like an upside-down version of Facebook's "like" thumb. Facebook fans have been asking for a dislike button for longer than we can remember, but instead, we have an array of reacts including love, angry, and sad. 

Will the Twitter dislike button be rolled out across the platform?

Interestingly, the idea of a Twitter dislike button was teased last year. When one user went on a scathing rant about the platform, Product Lead Kayvon Beykpour responded and said that a downvote button "is something we're exploring". Back then, someone highlighted the potential problems of a dislike button and explained, "I would argue against the necessity of [a dislike button], primarily because it will 100% be abused, and I can't imagine a way for it to be implemented without allowing it to be abused".

While there are arguments that a dislike button would spread negativity, we've seen it work wonders on Reddit and YouTube. These days, it's hard to imagine a world where Reddit comments didn't come with an upvote or a downvote option. It's much the same with YouTube, as the number of likes and dislikes tend to influence whether you want to watch a piece of content or not. Importantly, dislike buttons can help validate the legitimacy of someone's work or commentary.

For the time being, any notion of a dislike button - or even a downvote button - are in the very early testing phase. Downvoting replies won't affect the order they appear in (for now), but we imagine that's a feature that will be tweaked if the trial rolls out across Twitter. In the meantime, we guess Reddit is looking for a good copyright lawyer right now.