A ‘Dislike’ Button Is Coming to Facebook. Whether You Like It or Not

Like or dislike? That will soon be the question.

In a town-hall like forum held yesterday at the company’s Silicon Valley headquarters, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company is “very close to shipping a test” of a dislike button.

After fielding a question regarding potential options for different buttons (e.g., “I’m sorry”, “Interesting”, or “Dislike”) Zuckerberg responded with the following:

“Today is a special day, because today is the day where I actually get to say that we’re working on it, and are very close to shipping a test of it.”

Although some feel that the new feature has potential to make the world’s largest forum a more unfriendly place, Zuckerberg disagrees. He continues:

“We don’t want to turn Facebook into a forum where people are voting up or down on people’s posts, right? I mean, that doesn’t seem like the kind of community we want to create…You don’t want to go through the process of sharing some moment that was important to you during your day and have someone down-vote it.”

But what comes next is especially interesting. Zuckerberg, who runs a company that is traditionally very data-driven in its decision making, shares the following insight:

“Over the years of people asking for this what we kind of have come to understand is that…people are not looking for an ability to down vote other people’s posts. What they really want is to express empathy…Not every moment is a good moment, and if you are sharing something that is sad, whether it’s something in current events, like the refugees crisis that touches you, or if a family member passed away, then it may not feel comfortable to like that post. So I do think it’s important to give people more options than just like.”

Check out Zuckerberg’s full response here:

Hmm. Interesting.

First of all, I’m not a Facebook user. Ironically, one of the reasons I’m not a fan of the platform is the amount of negativity I see there—for some reason people feel totally comfortable posting words in the form of comments that they would never say to someone’s face. (I get my fill of hate here on LinkedIn, thank you very much—just check out the comment thread on my recent post on Apple.)

I respect Zuckerberg’s assertion that people are looking for more options for self expression. And I’m sure that many will use any of these alternatives in a responsible and respectful way. (Isn’t that why we love emoticons?)

But I also strongly believe that a whole grip of people will be using those buttons—especially a dislike button—in the exact way that Zuckerberg says they won’t. He’s fooling himself if he thinks otherwise.

But is that bad? On other social media platforms, downvoting can help identify if a view is truly as popular as it appears. When a controversial post or comment gets a high amount of likes, it’s easy to say that many people share the opinion of the writer. And that’s true. But if there is some sort of “dislike” option, it will often become obvious that there are many more people who believe the opposite—and then we have a better picture of popular opinion. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a scientific study. But it could be helpful.

Some feel like Vindu Goel, who wrote in his piece for the New York Times that “making it easy to dislike something with the flick of a finger could make the social network a meaner, uglier place.” And maybe he’s right. I guess time will tell.

But one thing is certain: With a user base that includes one out of every seven persons on earth,  it’s safe to say that people will be watching.

And the internet world will change again—for better or for worse.

What do you think? Is the dislike button a good or bad idea? Let me know in the comments section.

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