### Instagram Is Evaluating a Private Downvote Option for Comments

Have you observed what appears to be a dislike button adjacent to comments on your Instagram profile? If so, you belong to a limited group of users trialing a new feature.

Instagram is testing a mechanism that enables users to downrank comments they consider negative, harmful, or simply disagreeable, as reported by *Social Media Today*. According to Instagram’s head, Adam Mosseri, the downvote button offers “a private way to indicate that they don’t feel positive about that specific comment,” as he mentioned in a post on Threads.

Nonetheless, in contrast to downvoting on platforms such as YouTube or Reddit, these downvotes won’t be visible to the public, and there will be no total count shown.

### A Trial, Not a Permanent Addition—Yet

“I want to emphasize: this is a trial. There is no dislike count, and nobody will know if you press the button,” Mosseri explained. “Ultimately, we might incorporate this signal into comment ranking to position disliked comments further down. Our goal is to make comments more amicable on Instagram.”

### Meta’s Track Record of Testing Downvotes

This isn’t the first instance of Meta experimenting with downvote features. However, as with many of the company’s trials, there’s no assurance this feature will be widely implemented—or implemented at all. It may just be another avenue for Meta to investigate how to maintain Instagram’s engagement and safety without delving into political controversies.