Twitter needs your help in spotting irrelevant replies to tweets. The social media giant announced Wednesday that they would be testing a new system for “up and down votes on replies” to tweets. According to Twitter, their goal is to help it identify the content users want to see.
“Some of you on iOS may see different options to up or down vote on replies. We’re testing this to understand the types of replies you find relevant in a convo, so we can work on ways to show more of them.”
Twitter
For now, the feature is being tested fora small group of iOS users. Twitter notes that the votes will appear in different styles. In some cases, the up and down vote may be shown as up and down arrows, while in other cases as a thumbs up and thumbs down buttons. Another group of testers will continue to the the like button, but with the down vote button alongside it. Twitter clarifies that downvotes won’t be public while upvotes will be shown as likes. The user won’t be notified that someone has downvoted their reply, while the upvoting will notify the user and the reply will show up in their Likes tab.
Twitter also says that the downvote button “isn’t quite a dislike button.” In this research experiment, the thumbs down icon is a down vote that lets Twitter know that you think the reply isn’t relevant to the conversation. They also say that the votes won’t impact the order of replies to tweets.
At the moment, Twitter allows users to manually hide replies that are not relevant to the conversation by placing them behind a “hidden replies” button. It remains unclear if they could do something similar to replies that receive many downvotes, like Reddit does. Twitter hasn’t said if it plans to make this feature permanent.
