Twitter is expanding its experimental downvote feature to web, iOS, and Android users globally, the company said on February 4. The option to downvote replies was first introduced in July last year to a small group of iOS users, but unlike in Reddit, the downvotes aren’t public and are instead used by Twitter to surface the most relevant replies. Critics, however, argue that the downvote feature will not help Twitter in its goal of tackling misinformation, hate speech, and spam on the platform, and could rather add to the company's troubles by giving miscreants another avenue for manipulating content. These concerns are markedly relevant when looking at them from the lens of the TekFog investigation, which showed how social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook can be gamed to alter public perception. https://twitter.com/Schubes17/status/1489629805360431113?s=20&t=SV5zaTtPSo4WjXjXlwQy9g What could go wrong? In January, an investigation by The Wire uncovered an alarmingly sophisticated app called TekFog that can be used to manipulate Twitter and Facebook trends, hijack inactive WhatsApp accounts and spread propaganda, and target automated hate content towards specific groups of people with auto-replies. The investigation alleged that the app has strong ties to the ruling BJP party and was used to promote the party's agenda through coordinated misinformation campaigns and targeted hate speech. The downvote feature could be seen as another weapon in the arsenal of apps and operations like TekFog because if Twitter uses the downvote count in its algorithm to rank replies it can be gamed by malicious actors to downvote dissenting opinions or…
