Twitter Is Looking Into Adding a Dislike Button to Platform
Written by SOURCE on November 18, 2020
Twitter is apparently “exploring” the idea of adding a dislike/downvote button, at least according to its product lead.
The subject came up when a user, who Mashable reports is a “cybersecurity expert” for the Biden campaign, pitched the following ideas for the company to focus on instead of adding the newly launched “fleets” (explained here). That person’s suggestions were:
> Removing all coordinated inauthentic behavior
> Improving user experience regarding harassment and reporting
> Add dislike button or downvote capability
> Disinformation harming users
In response, Kayvon Beykpour, whose bio bills him as Twitter’s product lead, wrote the following…note the final sentence: “#1, 2 and 4 are literally our top priority (making the public conversation on Twitter) and has been for years. We’ve made a lot of progress but still lots to do. We do feel it’s important to solve other problems too! As for #3, this is something we’re exploring.”
Mashable writes that Twitter confirmed the idea, and stated that the company plans to become home to more nuanced discussions.
It’s certainly worth adding that Twitter constantly tests new features that never actually get off the ground, hence the quotes around “exploring.”
Obviously at this point it’s not clear when or if this will happen. So feel free to stick to angry responses for the foreseeable future (or just free yourself from our irksome tech overlords/toxic discourse and stay off there).
On a somewhat related note, back in late 2016, Twitter silently added an option to say you don’t like certain tweets, which appears to be an attempt to allow you to further curate your timeline. It’s not quite the same (hence the usage of “somewhat related”) but shows some awareness of the obnoxious dick problem that has plagued the platform since its inception. Anyway, Twitter users have always been so receptive to change in the past, so this will probably be unanimously praised if the platform does go forward with it.
