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Twitter is now testing out downvotes with some iOS users
Twitter trials yet another feature nobody asked for instead of an edit button
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Twitter has started testing out a ‘downvote’ button on the site, with a select group of users on iOS. It seems to be more of a way of training its own algorithm, as any downvotes aren’t shown to the public at the current time.
If you’re using the beta version of the iOS Twitter app, you might notice another icon under replies, and/or a differing version of the heart icon for favoriting a tweet.
Those could be up and down arrows, a heart icon and a down arrow, or a thumbs up and a thumbs down icon.
The company says it is testing the feature to “understand the types of replies you find relevant in a convo, so we can work on ways to show more of them.” To me, that suggests that Twitter will be using this data to reorder the reply chains, to surface those that are more notable.
Twitter hasn’t said if these downvote buttons will become a permanent feature on the site, or even if voting will change the order of things that show up in your feed.
Then again, the social media sites all seem to copy features and the downvote button is a huge part of how Reddit’s rankings work, a fact that the Reddit Twitter account knows well.
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