Social Media

TikTok Adds Downvote Button For Comments

TikTok is rolling out a downvote button, allowing users to flag inappropriate or inappropriate comments.

The launch of the dissenting votes follows testing that TikTok ran all summer long.

TikTok announced in April that it was exploring ways to proactively remove offensive and hateful content or behavior that violates our Community Guidelines.

One feature that grew out of this testing period is the vote down button, which gives the TikTok community a way to edit itself.

When it’s rolled out globally, the downvote button appears below the comments next to the like button. It looks like a thumbs down icon, as shown in the example below.

Screenshot from Twitter.com/TikTokComms, September 2022.

The downvote button seems self-explanatory, but TikTok’s implementation of it doesn’t work as well as you might expect.

TikTok confirms that the total number of dislikes is not announced, which is why you don’t see a number next to the icon.

From its upvotes, only TikTok’s moderation team will know how many downvotes a comment receives.

Moreover, the downvote button does not affect the number of comment likes. It’s more of a way to send feedback to TikTok moderators.

On a site like Reddit, when you downvote a post or comment, it removes the upvote. This gives users more control over which comments appear first, as Reddit ranks comments in order of most upvotes.

this Not How does the vote down button work in TikTok.

In an advertisement, TikTok explains what it aims to achieve with the downvote button:

We created it as a new way to hear feedback directly from our community. This allows us to better identify inappropriate or inappropriate comments, which helps us enhance the comments section for authentic and authentic interactions.

Our main priority with this feature is to create a better experience for our community. With this in mind, the total number of dislikes on a comment will not be shown and people can take back their comments by clicking back whenever they like.

In practice, the downvote button could have a similar effect to a Reddit button, depending on how long it takes TikTok to take action on a flagged comment.

TikTok’s implementation has the potential to make more diplomatic decisions, given that the moderation team has the final say.

I mean, it’s less likely to be removed by downvoting the top comment unless it’s offensive or violates TikTok’s Community Guidelines.

Downvoting a comment because you don’t agree with what was said or don’t like the person who posted it will not affect visibility the same way it would on Reddit.

Will any of this bring about a meaningful change in the discourse in the TikTok comments section? Only time will tell about that.


Source: TikTokComms on Twitter

Featured image: Screenshot from Twitter.com/TikTokComms, September 2022.

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