- X develops dislike button for replies.
- Feature aims to improve content ranking.
- Public testing appears imminent based on code discoveries.
Hearts break on X
Elon Musk’s X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, is secretly developing a downvoting feature that might revolutionize how replies are ranked.
Recent code discoveries in the X iOS app reveal a broken heart icon nestled next to the familiar heart-shaped “like” button, hinting at a potential “dislike” function.
This development marks a significant shift from Twitter’s 2021 experiments with both upvoting and downvoting across all posts.
Reply roulette
The new feature appears to target replies specifically, aiming to elevate popular responses and bury less-favored ones.
This approach could potentially curb engagement-baiting tactics where users post provocative content solely to generate negative reactions.
However, the exact scope of the feature remains unclear, with some references suggesting it might extend beyond just replies.
Testing the waters
Evidence of the dislike button’s development is mounting, with multiple users and reverse engineers spotting references in X’s code and even glimpsing the feature in action.
An X employee inadvertently shared a video demo featuring the dislike button, quickly deleting and reposting without it.
These sightings suggest that X is inching closer to a public test of this potentially game-changing feature.
