TikTok releases dislike button for comments worldwide

The comments section of any social media site may be a cesspool, but on TikTok, it’s extremely difficult to sift through all of the useless and offensive remarks to uncover meaningful debate. By implementing a dislike button, the platform is now making it easy to control which comments you see first.

The feature’s goal is to “promote a comments section for true and honest conversation” on the site. It’s an alternative to the report button, which can be accessed by pushing down on a remark, for comments that don’t break TikTok’s Community Guidelines but are nonetheless “irrelevant or unsuitable.”

TikTok has been working on the dislike function for quite some time, with social media expert Matt Navarra first seeing it in March 2020.

🔔 New feature incoming. Earlier this year, we started to test a new way people could identify comments they believe to be irrelevant or inappropriate. After some testing, we're releasing it globally. 📲 Read on for 3 fast facts

— TikTokComms (@TikTokComms) September 23, 2022

When you disagree with a comment, the thumbs down icon turns black. However, unlike the like button, the amount of dislikes received by a remark will not be shown in order to “prevent fostering ill-will among community members or demoralising artists.”

It’s unclear how useful the dislike button will be, given that users on TikTok find a similar content curation feature, a.k.a. the “not interested” option, worthless. A recent analysis from the Mozilla Foundation also showed that YouTube’s dislike button didn’t do anything to improve the user experience. TikTok’s hate button, hopefully, will be a more effective tool.