A YouTube feature that has caused plenty of debate in the past is heading to a rival platform, albeit with a bit of a twist.
Back in 2021, YouTube made some big changes to its dislike button by removing the amount of public thumbs down votes videos and comments received.
YouTube argued that this change would help create a more “inclusive and respectful environment,” but instead, it resulted in many users downloading third-party apps that reveal the amount of downvotes.
Now, Instagram is trying its luck at a dislike button of its own with the goal being to make the comments section on the app more “friendly.”
Instagram introduces YouTube-style dislikes, but with a catch
In a post on Threads, Instagram head Adam Mosseri revealed that the app is in the process of testing a dislike feature and some users already have access to it.
“Some of you may have seen that we’re testing a new button next to comments on Instagram – this gives people a private way to signal that they don’t feel good about that particular comment,” he said.
However, like YouTube, Instagram won’t be revealing how many down votes a comment receives and dislikes won’t be public.
That said, Mosseri indicated that this feature could morph into a Reddit-style ranking system for comments with the most-disliked replies being shown further down in a post.
“Eventually, we may integrate this signal into comments ranking to move disliked comments lower down. Our hope is that this might help make comments more friendly on Instagram.”
We’ll have to see if Instagram decides to take things a step further and add the dislike button to posts themselves or even make them public, just as YouTube used to.
For its part, YouTube also made a change to its comments section in a February update with a new “thread” feature that rubbed users the wrong way with its implementation.