If you're lucky, you may have recently seen the downvote reply option on Twitter.

Considered an experimental feature, Twitter started testing it in 2021. Now, the social network is rolling out the option to downvote across the world as a test.

Initially, the feature was given to a select group of web users. But it's currently expanding to iOS and Android users. Twitter's downvotes are different from downvoting on Reddit - in that totals for upvotes and downvotes are hidden to the public on Twitter. In fact, downvotes are used by Twitter to determine which replies it shows users. According to Twitter's tests so far, users tend to downvote replies they find offensive or irrelevant. "This experiment also revealed that downvoting is the most frequently used way for people to flag content they don’t want to see", said Twitter.

Keep in mind Twitter also offers the option to mute a conversation or mark it as spam, but those toggles are buried underneath dropdown menus.

Twitter feels that downvoting "improves the quality of conversations on Twitter", which means its downvote feature might eventually become official - as a way to give feedback on content.

Let's also not forget that YouTube recently demoted dislikes, by making video vote-counts private last November. Meanwhile, Facebook has pushed forward with downvote testing.