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You can now downvote comments on TikTok videos

TikTok has a new feature and this time it’s for the comment section of its short-form videos.

On Friday, TikTok announced via a tweet that it was globally releasing a new dislike button feature for TikTok video comments. The tweeted announcement offered up a few details about what to expect and an image of the new feature:

1️⃣ This is what it looks like 👇 pic.twitter.com/aCuOVBhFdL

— TikTokComms (@TikTokComms) September 23, 2022

Essentially, the dislike button functions much like you’d think it would. If you see an unrelated or unseemly comment, you can select the new dislike button (a thumbs-down icon to the right of the like button/heart icon). While comments can still have the total number of likes displayed next to them, TikTok says that the number of dislikes a comment garners won’t be displayed at all. TikTok users will also be able to “take back” a dislike they gave a comment by selecting the button again.

Which begs the question: If the number of dislikes isn’t shown next to a comment, why have a dislike button at all? Well, according to TikTok’s tweet thread announcement, it’s a way for users to let TikTok know about the presence of “irrelevant or inappropriate comments” so that TikTok can “create a better experience for our community.” That said, it’s still unclear what happens to a comment that gets a lot of dislikes. We reached out to TikTok to get some clarification on what happens to comments that receive a ton of dislikes and if we hear back, we’ll update this article with its response.

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Anita George
Anita has been a technology reporter since 2013 and currently writes for the Computing section at Digital Trends. She began…
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