Facebook Working On New “Dislike” Button

Following many years of popular existence without it, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed yesterday [Sept 15] during a Q&A session that his company is working on a “dislike” button for the social media platform.

Zuckerberg said that the button will be intended to allow users to “express empathy” on posts as opposed to turning Facebook “into a forum where people are voting up or down on people’s posts,” but that the exact form that the button may take in a public rollout is still to be determined.

The Facebook CEO said, “It took us awhile to get here, because we didn’t want to just build a “dislike” button because 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 we want to create.”

Mark Zuckerberg reveals Facebook “dislike” button during Q&A:

“You don’t want to go through the process of sharing some moment that’s important to you in your day and then have someone down vote it. That isn’t what we’re here to build in the world.

“Not every moment is a good moment, right? And if you are sharing something that is sad, whether it’s something in current events like the refugee crisis that touches you or if a family member passed away, then it might not feel comfortable to “Like” that post, but your friends and people want to be able to express that they understand and that they relate to you.

“So I do think that it’s important to give people more options than just Like as a quick way to emote and share what they’re feeling on a post, so we’ve been working on this for awhile. It’s surprisingly complicated to make an interaction that you want to be that simple.

“But we have an idea that we think we’re going to be ready to test soon, and depending on how that does, we’ll roll it out more broadly.”