Twitter announced on Friday that it is expanding the experimental option to allow users to downvote replies within tweets for a global audience. The feature was initially tested with some iOS users last year. Twitter said the downvote option on responses is to help understand the types of responses that users find relevant in a conversation. Downvotes, however, are not visible to the public. This is different from platforms like Reddit, where both upvotes and downvotes are visible for public viewing to understand whether or not the masses liked a particular comment.
As a result of the expansion, Twitter users on the web will now begin to see the option to downvote a specific answer in a conversation. The experience will also soon be available to Android and iOS users worldwide, the company said in a tweet. published via the Twitter support account on the platform.
It is important to note that your downvotes will only be visible to you. This means that other people on the platform will not be able to see which answers you have downvoted.
Twitter too noticed that the feature is just a quiz for poll and votes will not change the order of answers.
In July of last year, Twitter introduced downvote responses as the experimental feature to “work on ways to show” more relevant responses in a conversation. The microblogging network he said that the initial test helped understand that most of your users clicked the down arrow on their responses “either because the response was perceived as offensive, or because they perceived it as not relevant, or both”.
Twitter also said that downvoting was the most used form for people to flag content they didn’t want to see.
“People who have tested downvoting agree that it improves the quality of conversations on Twitter. We are excited to see how others think about this as it becomes available to more of you.” he said.
Twitter may downvote responses as a permanent addition to its platform to bolster its algorithms and make them more attractive to users in the future. However, options to allow people to downvote or dislike an answer can be used negatively to silence dissenting views and opinions.
For example, YouTube last year began hiding ‘Dislike’ counts from its site to protect creators from harassment and targeted attacks. Facebook has also in the past considered adding a ‘Dislike’ button, but has not yet rolled it out to the masses. Instead, the company brought in reactions where people can voice their opinions on a specific comment or respond with an emoji.
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