According to the latest report, TikTok announced Wednesday that it has begun testing a way for users to identify comments they deem irrelevant or inappropriate. After announcing the news, the company confirmed to TechCrunch that users who took part in the test would be able to flag such comments with a private dislike button. This new feature is currently being tested in selected countries and regions, excluding the United States.
Once a user doesn’t like a comment, it won’t be made public, and commenters won’t be notified that their comment has been disliked. commenters and other users also can’t see the number of times a comment is disliked.
TikTok said it sees the button as a way for users to flag comments that may be spam or meaningless in the context of the videos they post. The company explained that the dislike button is not seen as a way to report comments, and users should use the standard procedure for reporting comments such as harassment, hate speech, bullying, etc.
TikTok is testing a ‘Dislike’ button for comments pic.twitter.com/Pv8anV5fDh
— Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) January 27, 2022
“we’ve already started testing a way for individuals to identify comments they deem irrelevant or inappropriate,” the company said in a blog post about the new test. “this community feedback will add a range of factors that we’ve already used to help keep the comment areas relevant and become a place to really engage.”
The company declined to share details about the user interface that didn’t like the buttons. Social media consultant Matt Navarra first discovered the feature in early January.
There are a variety of different “don’t like” buttons on several digital platforms. YouTube provides a thumbs-down button for comments, but the count of disliked buttons will be hidden. Reddit, on the other hand, provides a similar no-vote button for comments, but the total number of votes for and against is public. In addition, Twitter has been testing a private no-vote button for responding to Tweets.
In addition to the new private dislike button, TikTok has also begun to experiment with the reminder function, which guides users to use the app’s comment filtering and bulk blocking and deletion options. These reminders will be displayed to users whose videos get a lot of negative reviews. TikTok will test the feature and decide whether to roll it out across the board in the coming weeks based on the results.
If fully rolled out, the feature will be added to TikTok’s existing creator tools, such as choosing to filter all comments for manual review, or filtering comments that contain keywords of their choice. Users can also choose who can comment on their content. For example, users can choose to allow anyone on the platform to comment, only to those they follow, or not to allow anyone to comment at all.