The feature’s goal is to “promote a comments section for true and honest conversation” on the site. It’s an alternative to the report button, which can be accessed by pushing down on a remark, for comments that don’t break TikTok’s Community Guidelines but are nonetheless “irrelevant or unsuitable.” TikTok has been working on the dislike function for quite some time, with social media expert Matt Navarra first seeing it in March 2020.
— TikTokComms (@TikTokComms) September 23, 2022 When you disagree with a comment, the thumbs down icon turns black. However, unlike the like button, the amount of dislikes received by a remark will not be shown in order to “prevent fostering ill-will among community members or demoralising artists.” It’s unclear how useful the dislike button will be, given that users on TikTok find a similar content curation feature, a.k.a. the “not interested” option, worthless. A recent analysis from the Mozilla Foundation also showed that YouTube’s dislike button didn’t do anything to improve the user experience. TikTok’s hate button, hopefully, will be a more effective tool.
