Facebook considering a new “dislike” button
If you have a pulse and an internet, you’ve probably experienced this before: you log on to Facebook, you see a story about kittens in Africa that are starving and have ebola, and you want to acknowledge the post without a conversation, but “LIKE” seems to be the opposite feeling you’d like to convey.
For that reason, may have demanded a “DISLIKE” button for years. For a decade. It is so long overdue, it’s almost exhausting to write about, but after years of standing firmly against a “DISLIKE” button, the social media giant appears to be softening their stance.
During a recent Q&A with Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, he confessed that they are mulling over the inclusion of a “DISLIKE” button, a thumbs down that would express that you don’t like cats with ebola, rather, you’re acknowledging them in passing and you are sad about it and do not like enthusiastically a story about that whole sad mess.
“We’re thinking about it,” Zuckerberg said. “It’s an interesting question.”
Why have the avoided the dislike button for so long?
To his credit, Zuckerberg does point out that there is a possibility of using the dislike button to bully or shame others, which is why the company has been so hesitant to add it. He does acknowledge that people may want an alternative for expressing themselves aside from using the like button. Let’s face it – you don’t want to “LIKE” that your friend’s mom just died, but you also don’t want the onslaught of push notifications you’ll get if you comment on a status update of that nature (selfish, but true).
“You can always just comment,” he said, proving that despite having the foresight to be the architect of such a massive undertaking, he is truly out of touch with his users. While his hoodie-wearing yes-men tell him his ideas are made of gold, the rest of us are here stuck with a subpar product because he’s worried about bullying? Trust me, more bullying goes on in comments than any DISLIKE button could ever offer.
But the truth is that none of this really matters. Despite calling it an “interesting question,” it’s much ado about nothing. “We don’t have anything that’s coming soon,” Zuckerberg said.
If we had a DISLIKE button for that comment, we would use it right about now…
