X, formerly known as Twitter, may bring back the downvote feature for posts — something it did earlier Earlier testing was done in 2021Ahead of Elon Musk Acquisition of social networkAt the time of the original experiment, Twitter tested both upvoting and downvoting buttons, similar to how users can vote on the social forum site Reddit. But now, Code references found Surveys conducted in the X iOS app indicate that the company may consider adding downvotes to improve the ranking of answers.
This code was first spotted by reverse engineer Aaron Paris. @aaronp613 on x, “We regularly reveal new app features ahead of launch; the code references were found in Tuesday’s iOS app update,” Paris told TechCrunch.
Finding a reference to a new feature or functionality in an app’s code doesn’t necessarily mean the company plans to bring that feature to the public. Companies, and especially social media apps, test new features internally all the time before deciding whether to pursue or scrap a project.
However, in this case, at least one X engineer as well as X owner Elon Musk have now commented on the potential addition.
According to J. Baxter, According to X’s senior staff machine learning engineer, who works on Community Notes, the idea of leveraging negative signal could be useful, as it also works for X’s crowdsourced fact-checking feature.
If you add up all the negative signals, you might get a “hivemind like Reddit,” he explains. But one way to improve this system would be to only downrank posts that received negative ratings from people who generally disagree, He said on X.
This is similar to the system X uses with Community Notes, a feature that requires consensus among people who don’t usually agree with something before a fact-check can begin.
Although Baxter did not explicitly confirm that the downvote process was underway, he said that Community Notes relies on private ratings to avoid a “hivemind” and that private rating data was released anonymously after 48 hours in order to make ratings public without poisoning the rating process.
Musk also said Chimes on a thread with a one-word comment: “True.”
Using a consensus-building algorithm to rank posts could help X highlight better answers in long threads and inspire other companies to use similar tools on their platforms. Already, X’s Community Notes feature has inspired YouTube to test its own version, simply called Notes. At a time when people don’t always agree on the truth, it’s a way to keep track of what “most people” agree on as accepted fact, while still citing sources. But it’s managed by the social network’s users, not by any central authority.
However, other social startups are finding different ways to control their communities. For example, BlueSky, Experimenting with Composable ModerationWhere users can subscribe Self moderation service providers Customize the app to your liking – even layering one service on top of another.
The downvote might not be the only change coming to X. Another post from Paris going around now X Features a user interface that hides engagement buttons, such as the “Like” and “Repost” buttons, by default in favor of a new gesture-based menu for accessing these and other actions.
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