After months of testing, TikTok has introduced a new downvote option that makes it simple for users to flag “irrelevant or inappropriate” comments.
🔔 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
While TikTok users have long been able to report comments that violate the platform’s community guidelines, the new downvote is meant to help TikTok’s moderators identify negative behavior that’s more annoying than harmful.
The thumbs-down icon will appear on the far right of each comment, right next to the heart icon.
1️⃣ This is what it looks like 👇 pic.twitter.com/aCuOVBhFdL
— TikTokComms (@TikTokComms) September 23, 2022
Unlike hearts, though, TikTok won’t display the number of negative votes. Instead, only the person doing the downvoting will be able to see that they’ve done so, and they can easily remove their downvote by clicking the icon again.
TikTok isn’t the first social platform to experiment with downvotes as moderation tools.
Facebook has tested a similar feature for years, though public downvotes on a platform struggling to combat a reputation for targeted misinformation have never quite taken off.
Downvotes have been more successful on other platforms, though. Twitter’s more recent tests of private downvotes are still in progress, and Reddit’s public downvotes are one of the platform’s most important tools.