What you need to know
- TikTok is testing letting people dislike individual comments on videos.
- TikTok wants people to dislike poor-quality comments.
- It's suggested that dislikes will inform future proactive removal of comments.
TikTok is now testing a way for people to mark specific comments on videos as "irrelevant or inappropriate," the social network has confirmed in a newsroom post.
The move, TikTok says, will mean that it will be able to use the additional data as a way to proactively remove abusive content. However, only the person who dislikes the comment will see that they did — a move that TikTok hopes will reduce the chance of "ill-feeling."
"Alongside our work to proactively remove abusive and hateful content or behavior that violates our Community Guidelines, we also continue to explore new ways to help our community feel more in control over comments," the company said.
We've started testing a way to let individuals identify comments they believe to be irrelevant or inappropriate. 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. To avoid creating ill-feeling between community members or demoralize creators, only the person who registered a dislike on a comment will be able to see that they have done so.
Beyond that, TikTok isn't saying an awful lot about what this really means or when we can expect it to have an impact on the quality of comments that are currently left on videos posted to its platform.
TikTok is one of the best iPhone apps at what it does, but it isn't perfect. Like any platform of its kind, it can suffer from comments that are harmful and hurtful. At least TikTok is now giving people the tools to mark those comments as such.
