Twitter first announced their interest in giving people a downvote button in July of 2021. At the time, it was a test for research purposes. Twitter clarified “this is not a dislike button”, and pointed out that your downvotes will only be visible to you.
On February 3, 2022, @TwitterSupport tweeted: “We learned a lot about the types of replies you don’t find relevant and we’re expanding this test — more of you on web and soon iOS and Android will have the option to use reply downvoting. Downvotes aren’t public, but they’ll help inform us of the content people want to see.”
USA TODAY reported that if you have access to the new feature while in testing, you should see a notification from Twitter when you open the website or app. The downvote button will appear as a downward-facing arrow to the right of the heart-shaped like button.
Downvotes are not public, and they won’t be shared with the tweet’s author or others on the timeline. Twitter is using the downvote button to enable people to let the platform know when a reply “isn’t adding to the conversation”. The data from this test will be used to help Twitter prioritize higher quality content.
The Verge reported that Twitter’s experiment with the downvote button found that users downvoted replies that they found offensive or irreverent. “This experiment also revealed that downvoting is the most frequently used way for people to flag content they don’t want to see,” said Twitter.
My understanding of the downvote is that people can use it to let Twitter know the type of content they are not interested in and/or really don’t want to see. The downvote button is being used by Twitter to figure out what individual users want to see. It might be a way for Twitter to encourage people to keep using their platform. Don’t expect Twitter to suspend someone’s account solely based on the number of downvotes they receive.