The experiment saw it only applied to replies to a tweet, rather than the original tweet, so would be used in a long conversation thread, rather than to customise the content you see in your main feed. We're excited to see how others think of it as it becomes available to more of you.'

'Finally, people who have tested downvoting agree it improves the quality of conversations on Twitter. 'This experiment also revealed that downvoting is the most frequently used way for people to flag content they don't want to see. 'A majority of our users shared that the reason they clicked the down arrow was either because the reply was perceived as offensive, or because they perceived it as not relevant, or both,' a Twitter spokesperson explained of the new feature. Netflix also makes use of the downvote - or 'not for me' button for this same purpose.įacebook has experimented with a negative reaction option for posts, but has never implementing it, instead making use of reaction emojis. Where this form of interaction is used, it often feeds into the algorithm to tailor a feed or homepage, to give users a more curated list of content. YouTube removed the visible downvote count last year as a result of attacks on users, where the dislike option had been used to harm a video's performance. Twitter said results of the experiment had shown that users were downvoting replies they found offensive or irrelevant, rather than out of malice 'Coordinated efforts to downvote a certain user or group could end up silencing them or removing their take from an important cultural conversation.' 'This could be a way for Twitter users to better curate their Twitter feeds, but it's hard not to question what unintended implications the feature may have,' Meyers said. However, they have been used in campaigns of targeted harassment, and experts fear that if they feed into Twitter's algorithm, they could be used by activists to silence opinions they don't agree with.īridget Meyers, a digital marketing manager for the Cyphers Agency, told Lifewire when the feature was first announced in 2021 that it could strengthen the negativity and toxicity among some groups on Twitter.

They are a simple way to gather user feedback on content, without that user having to make a comment or report a post they don't want to see. The social media giant says it plans to use the feedback behind the scenes, to tweak what replies it shows users - rather than act as a rating system

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