TikTok is currently testing a new dislike button specifically for comments on the wildly popular social media app. Should the new button be approved, users will now be able to flag individual comments that they find to be ‘irrelevant or inappropriate.’ This dislike won’t be visible to anyone else, however.
In a recent blog post concerning the enforcement of safety frameworks and community guidelines, TikTok said: ‘This community feedback will add to the range of factors we already use to help keep the comment section consistently relevant and a place for genuine engagement.’ Users already have the ability to dislike videos they find offensive or inappropriate, for whatever reason.
The new button adds to that ability to essentially filter the content you don’t want to interact with or make your feelings about such content clear to TikTok themselves. Users also already have the option to report comments that offend them, and this button seems to perform a similar function. While the two features seem to work in tandem for the moment, one might be integrated into the other in a future build.
TikTok has also made it known that it is experimenting with numerous other features, such as bulk block and delete functions aimed at creators who receive inordinately high concentrations of negative interactions. Another feature currently undergoing rigorous testing is a comment filtration system. In a transparency report released yesterday, TikTok announced that it removed over 85 million pieces of video content between October and December of 2021 for community standards violations. This constitutes around 1 percent of all the content currently available on the app.
It is uncertain how many of these features in testing are going to make it to the next final build of the social media video sharing platform, but they are bound to change the way that TikTok operates in a big way, possibly even changing how the app is received.
Not everything coming to TikTok lately is censorship-related however. Recently, TikTok launched its very own music distribution platform, following suit with numerous other social media apps.
