Instagram is trying to improve the quality of discussions and reduce negative discourse on the popular social network by introducing a "Dislike" button that will allow users to mark harmful, irrelevant, or inappropriate comments. In the first phase, the button will only appear on comments, not on the content itself, and it will be available for both feed posts and Reels.
Despite the similarity to YouTube's dislike button or Reddit's downvote mechanism, Instagram has chosen not to display the number of dislikes to the public. According to Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri, the number of clicks on the button will influence the ranking of comments in the future, meaning that comments with a high number of dislikes will appear lower in the thread, while positive and relevant comments will receive more exposure.
Mosseri addressed the issue in a post on Threads, the Twitter competitor, and mentioned that the idea behind the dislike button is to provide users with a "private way to express dissatisfaction with a specific comment," hoping this will help make interactions on Instagram more positive. A Meta spokesperson confirmed that this is currently only a test and is available to a small group of users. If the test is successful, the button may be launched to all users in the future.
The addition of the dislike button is part of a broader trend on Instagram to improve the social experience on the platform. In the past year, the company has made several significant changes, including developing a video editing app that suspiciously resembles TikTok's CapCut and extending the length of Reels videos to three minutes—another move seen as an attempt to resemble TikTok. In this context, the company also recently canceled its partnership with external fact-checkers, a decision that drew criticism for potentially leading to the spread of false information on the platform.
While the addition of the dislike button could improve the quality of comments on Instagram, there is also concern that users may abuse the tool, for example, to silence certain opinions or harm other users through mass dislikes. The platform will need to find a balance between giving users the ability to mark negative content and preventing abuse of the new tool.