Facebook is finally working on a ‘dislike’ button
Facebook’s “like” symbol sits at the entrance to the company’s campus in Menlo Park, Calif. The company said Tuesday that it is working on a type of “dislike” button.
The “dislike” button you’ve been waiting for is finally coming to Facebook.
During a town hall Tuesday, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook is responding to years of demand from users who simply aren’t satisfied with the “like” button alone.
Zuckerberg didn’t confirm whether the feature would officially be called “dislike” or specify when it would be rolled out. The Menlo Park, Calif., company had resisted developing a “dislike” button for years because Zuckerberg wanted to avoid a Reddit-style system of upvoting or downvoting posts.
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“That doesn’t seem like the kind of community that we want to create,” he said during the Q&A at Facebook’s headquarters, which was streamed live on Zuckerberg’s Facebook page. “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.”
People want the button because they need other ways to “express empathy” beyond liking a post, he said. If someone posts about a death in the family, for example, users want an option other than clicking “like.”
“Not every moment is a good moment,” Zuckerberg said.
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