Facebook Is Finally Working On A ‘Dislike” Button

Facebook users have been asking for a ‘Dislike’ buttons for years now and for years Facebook has said that it is not going to happen. When users see the Like button they naturally want to see a dislike button beside it so that they can express their feelings either way that they feel appropriate. However for Facebook that causes some real problems.

Facebook does not want the dislike button to be a way of harassing and disrespecting other people, it also doesn’t want a dislike button to allow people to dislike sponsored posts which appear in your News Feed because in case you have not heard by now, this is lucrative money for Facebook.

On another note, please don’t forget to like this article.

However it seems that Facebook has had a change of heart and is now making a dislike button or something similar which is going to go into testing soon. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg addressed the issue yesterday at a public Q&A session where he said:

“People have asked about the ‘Dislike’ button for many years … and today is a special day, because today is the day that I actually get to say we are working on it and are very close to shipping a test of it.”

There are no specific details yet regarding how the button will work or if it will even be called a dislike button, however Zuckerberg did say that Facebook’s goal is to implement a button that makes it a tool to “express empathy.” Not every situation is like button appropriate, Facebook’s goal will be to develop a tool which allows them to ‘dislike’ a sad moment shared on Facebook instead of a button which could hurt someone’s feelings.

While Zuckerberg may have called it a “dislike button” yesterday, it is highly unlikely that the final product will be known as this. It is clear that he does not want to turn Facebook into a Reddit equivalent with people voting posts up and down with Facebook ranking them on popularity.

“We don’t want to turn Facebook into a forum where people are voting up or down on people’s posts. That doesn’t seem like the kind of community that we want to create: you don’t want to go through the process of sharing some moment that was important to you in your day and have someone downvote it.”

Given the recent community troubles that Reddit is had with users it is probably a wise choice to stay away from such a model. However, something is in the works from Facebook, we are not quite sure what its final form will be however no doubt we will see it soon.