‘Dislike’ button coming to Facebook
Facebook users will probably ‘like’ this: Facebook is to create a ‘dislike’ button.
Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, has announced that the social media site will add a “dislike” button to its network and that Facebook is very close to having it ready for user testing. He added that this button would be a way for people to express empathy.
Facebook's iconic 'like' button
A "dislike" button has been constantly requested by some users since the introduction of the now-iconic "like" button in 2009. In the past, Facebook has resisted calls from users to introduce a “dislike” button, amid apparent fears it would be unpopular with brands on the website.
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Said Zuckerberg,
"People have asked about the 'dislike' button for many years. Probably hundreds of people have asked about this.”
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg
However he went on to say he did not want it to be a mechanism with which people could "down vote" others' posts. Instead, it will be for times when clicking "like" on "sad" posts felt insensitive.
An example of a Facebook post
An expert in social media does not think that a ‘dislike’ button will not cause users to suddenly turn on each other’s post. Said Professor Andrea Forte,
“They may use a dislike button to express some negative emotions, like frustration with ads popping up in their feeds, but I doubt it will cause them to start wantonly disliking pictures of their friends' babies, dogs, cats and cooking experiments. I suspect it will mainly be used to express mild disapproval, or to express solidarity when someone posts about a negative event like a death or a loss."
(All images - credit: Wikimedia Commons under Creative Commons licence)
