# X Experiments With Up and Downvotes on Posts

Evidently X is contemplating one other UI replace, this time targeted on the Like icon, which can quickly be altering to a thumbs up as an alternative.

As you’ll be able to see on this instance, in a publish from person Sawyer Merritt, some customers are actually seeing a thumbs up icon as an alternative of the same old coronary heart, whereas the icon has additionally been moved to the left-hand aspect.

Right here’s a side-by-side comparability of what I’m seeing within the app versus this new format:

The engagement choices have been rearranged alongside the underside of the publish, with the center changed by a thumb.

Which looks as if an odd change, contemplating established recurring behaviors within the app. However then once more, Elon Musk is eager to stamp his personal imprint onto each component of what Twitter had as soon as been, and he has proposed much more sweeping adjustments to the UI than this.

Like, for instance, eradicating the publish operate buttons altogether, and reverting to a bodily response-based engagement course of.

Musk has recommended that he desires the feed to be “extra clear,” with updates like this set to simplify and enhance the method. And from a visible perspective, that makes some sense, nevertheless eradicating the operate buttons may also probably impression general engagement, as a result of customers received’t have that instant immediate guiding them to react.

That’s probably why X backed off of its plan to make this the default for all customers, including this up to date, “clear” show as an possibility as an alternative.

However the swap to the thumb icon as an alternative of the center appears barely totally different, in that it’s not simplifying or streamlining the UI in any respect, it’s simply transferring issues round, and switching out the center.

Until, in fact…

As you’ll be able to see on this instance, shared by X Day by day Information, some X customers are additionally reporting that they’ve each thumbs up and thumbs down icons showing beneath posts within the app.

Which might give customers a easy means to sign each their curiosity or dislike of any publish in-stream, by way of a direct, up-front possibility.

That would work as an algorithm coaching software, serving to to additional customise and personalize your X expertise. And with each, the swap to a thumb icon makes much more sense.

We don’t know, in fact, as a result of X hasn’t shared any official information on the check, and it doesn’t have a PR division to ask both. So we’re left to take a position, nevertheless it does appear like it could be transferring to an up to date system designed to facilitate higher customization in-stream.