What you need to know
- Instagram’s head, Adam Mosseri teased a dislike button for comments on the platform as users started noticing it appears during its limited test.
- Mosseri states the dislike button is quite basic for now, but there are plans to add its “signals” to the platform to help push frequently disliked comments out of sight.
- A study from 2022 showed that YouTube’s dislike button wasn’t entirely effective in preventing unwanted content from showing up.
Instagram is reportedly working on a feature that its users may recognize from the old days of YouTube.
The Head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, posted an explainer about the chance for a “dislike button” to arrive on the platform (via 91Mobiles). It seems that Instagram has been running a limited test as Mosseri states some users have already noticed a dislike button beside comments in a post. The post explains that Instagram won’t leave much user-facing information by way of a dislike count or notification to others that you’ve “thumbs downed.”
Instead, Mosseri teases that Instagram’s dislike function will be more personal, designed to give “people a private way to signal that they don’t feel good about that particular comment.”
The post teases what could be in store for the future of Instagram’s dislike button, like the platform taking into account what you don’t like. In short, Mosseri states the platform may “integrate this signal into comments,” so things that people have consistently down voted will be pushed toward the bottom.
Right now, it just appears that Mosseri is bringing awareness to this test as a few users have begun noticing it. Considering the function is pretty barebones (it lacks the signals teased, we might have some waiting to do before it rolls out officially.
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There are a couple of platforms that come to mind regarding dislikes: Reddit and YouTube. While the former still has an upvote and downvote feature, the latter removed it long ago. There was also a study in 2022 that brought attention to YouTube’s dislike button and how it (really) didn’t help you much. According to Mozilla’s research, the dislike option of YouTube could not properly guide bad recommendations out of a user’s sight.
Out of 500 million analyzed videos, the dislike button only succeeded in preventing roughly 12% of unwanted content from appearing.
What was far more effective was the “remove from watch history” and don’t recommend channel” options.
Additionally, Instagram’s interest in hiding away negative or hurtful comments is an extension of its updated safety features. The platform lets users block one person’s account, as well as any other accounts that person may have. That update also brought improvements to Hidden Words, which let users turn on a filter that automatically removed harmful content from their comments and DMs.