Formerly Twitter X may bring back the ability to downvote posts, a feature it tested in 2021 before Elon Musk's acquisition of the social network. At the time of the initial experiment, Twitter was testing both upvote and downvote buttons, similar to how users can vote on social forum site Reddit. But now, code references found in X's iOS app indicate that the company may be considering adding downvoting just to improve the ranking of replies.
The code was first spotted by reverse engineer Aaron Peris (@aaronp613 of X), who regularly finds new features for apps before they're released. The code references were found in an iOS app update on Tuesday, Peris told TechCrunch.
Finding a new feature mentioned in an app's code doesn't necessarily mean that the company plans to release it to the public. Companies, especially social media apps, always test new features internally before deciding whether to scale or drop the project.
But in this case, at least one X engineer and X owner Elon Musk have commented on the possibility of additional additions.
The idea of leveraging negative signals could also be useful as it informs X's crowdsourced fact-checking feature, according to Jay Baxter, a senior staff machine learning engineer at X who works on community notes.
He explains that simply adding up all the negative signals creates a “Reddit-like hive mind,” but one way to improve the system would be to only down-rank posts that receive negative feedback, usually from people who disagree, he said on X.
This is similar to the system X uses with its Community Notes, where a consensus must be reached among people who would normally disagree before a fact-check can be published.
Community notes would not work well without negative rating signals.
But you have to be smart about how you use them, because if you simply add it all up, you end up with a Reddit-like hive mind.
One way: Only downgrade if you see negative reviews, usually from people you disagree with https://t.co/YfX7Fpm8ka
— Jay Baxter (@_jaybaxter_) July 2, 2024
Baxter did not specifically acknowledge that downvoting was in development, but said that Community Notes relies on private ratings to avoid “herd mentality,” and that private rating data is made publicly available anonymously after 48 hours in order to make the ratings public without “tainting” the rating process itself.
Musk also commented on the thread, adding, “Exactly.”
Using a consensus algorithm to rank posts would allow X to highlight better replies in long threads, and might encourage other companies to use similar tools on their platforms. Already, X's Community Notes feature has inspired YouTube to test its own version, simply called Notes. In a day and age when people don't always agree on truth, this is a way to center what “most people” agree on as accepted fact while still citing sources. However, this is managed by the social network's users, not by a central authority.
But other social startups are exploring different ways to moderate their communities. Bluesky, for example, is experimenting with composable moderation, which lets users subscribe to their own moderation service providers to customize the app to their liking, even layering one service on top of another.
Downvoting may not be the only change coming to X. Another post by Perris currently trending on X showcases a user interface that will hide engagement buttons like the “like” and “repost” buttons by default, instead giving users access to these and other actions in a new gesture-based menu.