Facebook Explains Why They Didn’t Just Make A ‘Dislike’ Button

Earlier we reported that Facebook’s Reactions had begun their global rollout. There are six different Reactions to choose from, including the standard Like, and the closest thing we have to a dislike would be Angry, or maybe Sad. So the question is, why isn’t there a Dislike button, despite it being one of the more requested features of Facebook?

Turns out it wasn’t as simple as rotating the thumbs up image the other way around. According to Facebook Reactions product manager Sammi Krug, she told the folks at Tech Insider that the reason why there is no Dislike button is because Mark Zuckerberg felt that it was a bit too binary. “A dislike felt very binary to Mark and the team,” said Krug,

A post on Medium by Facebook’s director of product design Geoff Teehan also revealed that they did start off with a Dislike button, but eventually expanded it into the Reactions that we know today.

According to Teehan, “This might seem like a pretty straightforward task: Just slap a thumbs down next to the Like button and ship it. It’s not nearly that simple though. People need a much higher degree of sophistication and richness in what choices we provide for their communications. Binary ‘like’ and ‘dislike’ doesn’t properly reflect how we react to the vast array of things we encounter in our real lives.”

Facebook Reactions are currently live and are making their way around the world, so users should keep an eye out for it in the very near future.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Cellphones, Web
Tags: Facebook