The downvote button in X (formerly Twitter) may be available in the future, and those bad contents may perish.
Image source : Ngantech
Aaron Perris is the reverse engineer who contributes to MacRumors.com and regularly posts unreleased features that may be officially available in the future, spotted the source code from X. That source code is directed to the downvote post replies, which is the experimental feature that was available back in 2021.
It looks like X might be bringing back the downvote button for replies? pic.twitter.com/1s2LzhH7WN
— Aaron (@aaronp613) July 2, 2024
However, that downvote feature in 2021 was considered a failure after a year of testing. The downvote feature in X was based on user votes, so anyone has the freedom to vote manually, rather than using a rating system which sometimes closes the bad reviews if the rating score is very good, and vice versa.
After most experiments, Twitter realized people abused the downvote system in X. Instead of using the downvote to measure content quality, they used it as a hateful act or to flag content they didn’t want to see, despite the content itself being positive for most people.
YouTube Hides Dislike Feature in 2022
Connecting with the previous section, YouTube also hid the dislike feature. However, the reason might be controversial and more likely based on company reason. If you’re wondering why, then you need to visit YouTube Rewind 2018 and 2019. These videos have higher dislike ratio than like ratio, which is heavily the main reason by people why YouTube decided to hid the dislike feature in 2022.
But the statement from YouTube CEO Susan Wojcick was different. Susan said the dislike indicator harms the smaller creators to express their contents.
Why does X plan to Add a Downvote feature?
Although the downvote feature failed in 2021, X wants to bring it again in 2024. They said the age where some people disagree with the truth might be coming, and X wants to use the downvote feature as a fact statement for specific posts/replies rather than simply a big rumour by someone or the company itself.
Closing Words
The Downvote feature may be able to stop bad content creators, but history will repeat itself if the haters keep repeating the same thing, as in 2021. For now, the downvote feature is currently in experiment again, after 2 years of cancellation. If X officially anounce the downvote feature will available in the future, then it’s better to start the quality posts or replies from now.
