TikTok is Rolling Out Comment Dislike Button to Users worldwide
TikTok announced today that its comment dislike button is now available to all users worldwide. The dislike button was first tested by the short-form video app in April as a way for users to identify comments they believe are irrelevant or inappropriate.
If you dislike a comment, the dislike is not made public, and commenters are not notified that their comment has been disliked. Commenters and other users will also be unable to see the number of times a comment has been disliked. You can also change your mind by tapping the button again.
“Earlier this year, we started to test a new way people could identify comments they believe to be irrelevant or inappropriate. After some testing, we’re releasing it globally. We’ve created it as a new way to hear feedback directly from our community. This allows us to better identify irrelevant or inappropriate comments, which helps us foster a comment section for genuine and authentic interactions,” the company said in a tweet.
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TikTok says that the primary aim of this feature is to improve the user experience. TikTok explained when it first started testing the dislike button that it sees it as a way to flag comments that may be spam or don’t make sense in the context of the video they’re posted under. It was stated that the dislike button should not be used to report comments and that users should continue to use the standard process for reporting comments for harassment, hate speech, bullying, and so on.
TikTok has been working on the dislike button for quite some time, with social media consultant Matt Navarra first noticing it in March 2020.
TikTok now joins the ranks of several other digital platforms that have some form of a dislike button. YouTube, for example, has a thumbs-down button for comments, but the dislike count is private. Reddit, on the other hand, has a similar downvote button for comments, but the total number of upvotes and downvotes is public. Twitter is also testing a private downvote button for tweet replies.