Chinese short-form video app TikTok on Friday announced that it is rolling out the “Dislike” button for comments around the world. The social media platform started testing the feature in April 2022 to support the safety of its community and to foster kindness on TikTok.
Announcing the Dislike feature in a tweet, TikTok Communications Team explained that it will help users flag comments that they think are “irrelevant or inappropriate” without the dislike being visible to others.
TikTok claims that the dislike button will allow users to send feedback and help enhance the comment sections of the posted content.
“New feature incoming. 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,” TikTok’s Communications Team wrote in a tweet.
? New feature incoming. 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. ? Read on for 3 fast facts
— TikTokComms (@TikTokComms) September 23, 2022
According to TikTok, the dislike button has been created to listen to the community and to “foster a comment section for genuine and authentic interactions.”
“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,” it added.
“Our main priority with this feature is to create a better experience for our community. With this in mind, the total number of dislikes a comment has will not be shown and people can take back their feedback by tapping again whenever they like.”
Once you click the dislike button on a comment, the dislike does not become public. Only you will be notified. Neither the author of the comment nor other users will be notified that the comment has been disliked. Further, you can withdraw your dislike by tapping the button again. Also, you won’t be able to see how many dislikes a comment has received.
The new dislike button is the thumbs down icon, which will appear to the right of the heart-shaped like button next to each comment on TikTok. This button will appear in addition to the option to report a comment for community guideline violations.
TikTok said the dislike button isn’t seen as a way to report comments, but rather a way to serve to express that a comment has not been to the user’s liking. Users should use the standard process to report comments about harassment, hate speech, bullying, etc.
Besides TikTok, YouTube already offers a thumbs down button for comments. However, the dislike count is private. Reddit, a social news website and forum, also offers a similar upvote and downvote button for comments, which is public. Additionally, the microblogging platform Twitter is too testing a private downvote button for replies to tweets.
