Facebook co-founder and chief Mark Zuckerberg has confirmed that the company is working on a "dislike" button for posts on the massive social media website.
"People have asked about the 'dislike' button for many years, and probably hundreds of people have asked about this, 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," Zuckerberg revealed during a question and answer session on Tuesday (via CNBC)
For a while now, users have been asking for such a feature, but it has been subject of much discussion over the years. Zuckerberg explained that adding a "dislike" button has the potential to turn Facebook "into a forum where people are voting up or down on people's posts," something the company wants to avoid.
"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," he said, referencing terminology used on the popular online forum Reddit. On that site, users have the option to "upvote" or "downvote" a post; although there are rules that try to regulate what justifies a "downvote," it rarely helps. Oftentimes, users downvote something not based on the quality of the content, but rather if they agree or disagree with it. I imagine much of the Facebook community employing a similar tactic for posts about, say, a game they don't necessarily like (or perhaps someones personal/political views which will really get ugly)
Zuckerberg explained that rather than replicating Reddit, the dislike button would serve as a way to allow people to "express empathy" with their friends on Facebook. "If you are sharing somethign that is sad… then it may not feel comfortable to 'like' that post," he explained, justifying the purpose of the feature.
While a dislike button sounds good in theory, the actual implementation of it terrifies me. This is the internet, after all. I can see this spiraling completely out of control. Imagine the dislikes on a post for Destiny, a game that clearly has an audience, yet for some reason everyone loves to hate on.
