On July 21, 2021, Twitter announced on its verified support account that it would begin testing an option to upvote or downvote on replies made on the social media platform for select Mac iOS users.
Downvotes would not be made public, while upvotes would be shown as likes, according to the social media platform.
As of this writing, Twitter Support said the test was only in the research phase, and was only made available on iOS systems. Downvotes are only visible to the original poster and votes won’t change the order of replies. Upvoting a reply as part of the test will be treated as a like, and the original poster will be notified when the reply shows up in their “likes” tab.
“This isn’t quite a dislike button. In this research experiment, the thumbs down icon is a down vote that lets us know that you think the reply isn’t relevant to the conversation,” wrote Twitter. “We want to better understand the types of replies you do and don’t find relevant in a convo.”
It is unclear how many accounts will be affected by the test, when it will begin, or how long the research phase will last. Snopes contacted the Twitter team, and will update the article accordingly as more information becomes available.