Twitter’s experimental downvote feature, which the company began testing last year, is now rolling out globally. Downvotes were initially also only available to certain web users but will be expanded to iOS and Android users.
Downvotes are private reactions to replies. They’re not dislikes, nor will they change the order of replies under a tweet. Rather, downvotes are a tool for users to give feedback on the type of content they want to see.
The company says that downvotes help “to understand the types of replies you find relevant in a convo, so we can work on ways to show more of them.”
Twitter found that the majority of users downvoted replies that they perceived to be offensive or irrelevant and that downvoting proved to be the most frequent way for users to flag content they don’t want to see.
It additionally reported that users testing downvotes found it to be an effective way of improving the quality of conversations on the platform.
We learned a lot about the types of replies you don’t find relevant and we’re expanding this test –– more of you on web and soon iOS and Android will have the option to use reply downvoting.
Downvotes aren’t public, but they’ll help inform us of the content people want to see. https://t.co/g8LcTpQqDv pic.twitter.com/wm5MmdR4Xh
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) February 3, 2022
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