Welcome to the Tech Mem Right Home for Thursday, July 22nd, 2021. I'm Brian McCullough today.

Twitter is testing down votes. Tumblr gets into the subscription game. Google

unveils a unified backup service for Android. Is HBO Max leading the pack of

followers in the musical chairs streaming wars contest? The FTC is getting serious about right to repair and let

me introduce you to the Air B&B for Backyard Swimming Pools. Here's what you missed today

in the world of tech.

If you were in the Twitter space last night, you heard this get brought up at the end of the space.

Twitter is testing a way to down vote replies on iOS to understand the types of

replies users find relevant to a conversation. Down votes won't be public so

maybe this won't be useful for trolls one would hope

quoting 9 to 5 Mac Twitter confirmed this new test in a tweet posted to the

Twitter support account the company says that some users on

iOS will see new upvote and downvote options on tweets. Down votes will not be

shown publicly while up votes will be shown as likes, the company says, implying that the feature is only

intended for internal metrics.

According to Twitter, the goal of this new test is to, quote, understand the types of replies

you find relevant in a conversation, The prompt that appears to users in the

Twitter for iOS app reads as follows, quote,

dislikes aren't public or visible to the author while likes are. They both

help us understand what people think is valuable to the

conversation."

Twitter is testing multiple different designs for this new feature including upvote

...