‘X’ Develops 'Angry' Button for Downvoting Replies

The social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter) is continuing to develop a negative voting feature to improve the ranking of replies on posts.

While the Elon Musk-owned company has not officially announced its plans, recent indications suggest that the negative voting feature may resemble an "Angry" button rather than the traditional downvote symbol seen on platforms like Reddit.

According to TechCrunch, code references for the new feature were spotted in the X app for iOS. These references show that the button will take the form of a "broken heart" icon next to the "like" heart, directly referencing the negative voting option.

As it was known before Elon Musk's acquisition, Twitter tested a negative voting feature in 2021. In that earlier experiment, Twitter explored adding upvote and downvote buttons alongside every post.

However, the platform plans to add only a negative voting button in the new test.

This change aims to promote replies with the most likes to the top of the thread while relegating less liked replies to the bottom.

TechCrunch noted that the new feature could discourage users from posting content specifically designed to provoke anger, reducing the likelihood of posts inciting negative interactions through the "Angry" button.