TikTok users can now rate comments negatively within the app. However, the so-called downvotes will not be publicly visible. TikTok hopes that the function will primarily provide feedback on inappropriate content. Whether users will actually use the button in this way, however, seems questionable.
TikTok has been working on a so-called Dislike button for quite some time. In April 2022, the company announced an initial test phase.
At that time, the video platform already announced that the primary purpose of the function was to collect feedback on inappropriate comments. Now the Bytedance subsidiary announced the worldwide release of the function on Twitter.
TikTok: Dislike button to provide feedback on inappropriate content
According to the report, TikTok hopes the feature will help it “better identify irelevant or inappropriate comments.” This, in turn, would help “promote a comment section for genuine and authentic interactions.”
To that end, users would be asked to downvote comments that contain spam or are simply inappropriate. According to TikTok, this would in turn make it easier for the platform to identify such content.
Negative ratings are not visible
In order to prevent misuse of the function, the dislikes are not publicly visible, according to TikTok. Neither the originator of a comment nor other users would be able to see the negative ratings. This, in turn, is intended to help “provide a better experience for the community.”
Whether users of the platform actually use the downvotes in this way, however, seems extremely questionable. Rather, many users simply use the Dislike button to indicate that they do not like a comment.
Twitter also relies on a Dislike button
Other social networks also rely on the principle of a Dislike button. For example, YouTube users were able to rate videos both positively and negatively for quite some time. In November 2021, however, the company said goodbye to the Dislike function.
Twitter, meanwhile, expanded its downvote function after a test phase. There, too, users can rate content negatively. Like TikTok, Twitter primarily hopes for a feedback effect without displaying the dislikes. The
social news aggregator Reddit, on the other hand, shows its users how many negative votes a comment has received.
