TikTok is rolling out its comment dislike button globally to all users, the company announced on Friday. The short-form video app started testing the dislike button in April as a way for users to identify comments they believe to be irrelevant or inappropriate.
If you click the dislike button on a comment, the dislike won’t be public and commenters won’t be notified that their comment has been disliked. Commenters and other users also won’t be able to see how many times a comment has been disliked. You can also take back your dislike by tapping the button again.
🔔 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
“Earlier this year, we started to test a new way people could identify comments they believe to be irrelevant or inappropriate,” TikTok said in a tweet. “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.”
TikTok says its main priority with this feature is to create a better experience for users. When TikTok first began testing the button, it explained that it sees the dislike button as a way to flag comments that may be spam or that don’t make sense in the context of the video they’re posted under. It noted that the dislike button isn’t seen as a way to report comments, and that users should still use the standard process for reporting comments for harassment, hate speech, bullying, etc.
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TikTok has been developing the dislike button for quite some time now, as social media consultant Matt Navarra first spotted the feature in March 2020.
With this latest launch, TikTok joins several other digital platforms that have some variation of a dislike button. For example, YouTube offers a thumbs down button for comments, but the dislike count is private. On the other hand, Reddit offers a similar downvote button for comments, but total tallies for upvotes and downvotes are public. Twitter has also been testing a private downvote button for replies to tweets.
