Elon Musk’s X, formerly Twitter, seems to be working on developing a downvoting feature that will be used to improve how replies are ranked. Although the company has not yet officially announced its plans, more recent findings indicate the downvote feature might actually resemble a “dislike” button instead of a Reddit-style downvote icon.
Code references found in the X iOS app now show a button that shows as a broken heart icon next to X’s heart-shaped “like” button as well as direct references to a “downvote” feature.
Back in 2021, the company tested downvoting, before Elon Musk came into the picture. At the time of the original experiment, however, Twitter had tested both upvoting and downvoting buttons across all posts. The latest tests indicate that X is only considering enabling downvotes on replies, to help showcase the better replies on top of a thread while moving less-liked replies down in the queue.
Also Read: Google’s Dark Web Monitoring Is Now Available To All Users
X Wants To Curb Hate Speeches On Its Platform
This new feature would prevent users from posting content made specifically to anger people and trying to generate dislikes as a form of engagement. Recently, reverse engineer Aaron Perris, @aaronp613 on X, found references in X’s iOS app that referenced a downvote feature that appeared to be in development.
Perris found that X’s app now comes with several new references to a “downvoting” function as well as strings of text that ask the user to take action and confirm their downvote. For instance, one reads “Do you want to downvote this post?,” while another simply instructs the user to “Downvote this post.”
Also Read: What Is OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s Latest Venture Thrive AI?
X Is Testing The Dislike Button With Select Users
Another user, @P4mui on X, also shared videos of the dislike button in action, including one where a user asked them to dislike their reply to the post. The user, who had enabled the dislike button with the help of a feature flag, additionally noted that the button was only available on replies for the time being but they are not sure if that would later change.
The dislike button was also reportedly seen on an XX employee’s account who had posted a video demo of a new way to expand replies. That post was quickly deleted and reposted without the dislike button in view.
Given the number of people seeing this feature, it looks like more public tests of a dislike button are underway. This is not the only change X has made to its likes system under Musk’s ownership. More recently, the company started hiding likes from public view, enabling users, as Musk put it, to like more “edgy” content and protect their image.