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Facebook might soon create a dislike button for the users to express their empathy related to various sensitive posts that send an emotional message.
The dislike button will not allow people to harass one another and will not be used in a negative way. Basically, as CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, the new feature will not let people vote for posts:
“What they really want is to be able to express empathy. Not every moment is a good moment and if you’re sharing something sad … then it may not feel comfortable to like that post, but your friends want to express that they understand and that they relate to you,” he said.
For instance, if you read something about a friend’s personal drama or a personal tragedy, it might be totally inappropriate to hit the “like” button, but at the same time, you might not want to write a comment. A very good alternative would be to simply show your sympathy through a “dislike” that shows that you feel sorry something happened and you don’t like the bad news.
Zuckerberg also said that this is easier said than done, because it is quite difficult to implement a dislike button, in spite of some popular beliefs.
Facebook strives to encourage positive communication among its users and has strict policies against harassment and bullying online, even if negative comments are still allowed. Angry exchanges are not encouraged by the platform and researchers are looking into ways of promoting useful and positive messages.
Facebook’s CEO said that the new button will be tested soon and will become available to all the users. In a Q&A session that preceded the release, he said that many people have been asking for this for quite a while.
While at the beginning, the representatives of the company believed that the “dislike” option might be a way to down-vote other people’s posts, they finally understood that their requests was not at all about that and that it was a justified one.
In spite of the fact that there are many users out there who will be more than happy about the feature, there is still an anti-dislike group whose members express their fears that the new implementation will be a gateway to harassment and negative comments.
It remains uncertain whether Facebook’s dislike button will be used in the desired way and it is not known when the feature will become available. Zuckerberg has expressed his hesitancy about it before, so there might be a long wait before we are able to give the thumbs down to certain posts.
Image Source: yoda
