We know – most of you probably don’t care about Facebook anymore, but the reality is that Facebook remains one of the biggest social media platforms in the world, so when Mark Zuckerberg says Facebook will add a ‘dislike’ button, it naturally makes the news. The plan to roll-out a ‘dislike’ button, which will join the normal ‘like’ button, was revealed during a Q&A session today, and has apparently been a multiple year discussion within the social media giant’s walls. This is what Zuckerberg had to say about it:
“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.”
This is actually kind of groundbreaking for a social media platform. Apart from Reddit, which has the downvote function, no other major social media platform (that I can think of) has any sort of acknowledgement that has a negative connotation – however, the need has arisen simply because we are humans: “If you are sharing something that is sad…then it may not feel comfortable to ‘like’ that post,” says Zuckerberg.
And for the people who are wondering why something simple like a ‘dislike’ button is so hard to add, there are far-reaching search engine optimization issues that come with such a button – does a post that has a lot of dislikes mean it is a hated post, or should Facebook’s algorithm push it out as a viral post? Obviously, we’ll leave that to Facebook, but it will be interesting to see the results whenever it is released.
What do you think about Facebook adding a ‘dislike’ button? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
