Facebook has had a “Like” button since forever it seems, you only need to click once to signal to someone that you like what they’ve posted, shared or uploaded to the world’s largest social network. It has been asked many times that if Facebook has a like button why doesn’t it have a dislike button, one has been around for as long although only in memes, but it’s going to see the light of day soon. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has confirmed that the company is building a “dislike” button for posts.
Zuckerberg revealed this during a question and answer session today at Facebook’s headquarters in California. “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,” he said.
He does explain though that the idea behind this button is not to create a negative community where people “downvote” a moment you share which was important to you in your day but might not appeal to them as much.
Instead he says that the feature will enable users to “express empathy” with their friends on Facebook, for example if one of your friends shares something sad you may not want to like that post and that’s where the dislike will come in handy.
Zuckerberg added that the dislike button is actually “surprisingly complicated” to build but the company expects to start testing the new button in the near future before rolling it out for all users across the globe.