Facebook testing beyond ‘likes’, not ‘dislike’ button

Facebook may finally be getting a button that lets you quickly express something beyond a "like"

By: Tech Desk
Updated: September 16, 2015 07:02 PM IST

2 min read

Facebook may finally be getting a button that lets you quickly express something beyond a “like.” Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Tuesday that people have been asking for a “dislike” button on the social media site for years.

Speaking at an event at Facebook’s Menlo Park, California, headquarters that was streamed live online, Zuckerberg acknowledged that “like” isn’t always appropriate for some posts – about a tragic news event, for example – when people might want to express empathy.

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“People have asked about the disklike button for many years. And today is a special day because we’re actually going to say that we are working on it and we are very close to shipping a test to it. It took us a while to get here. We didn’t want to just build a dislike button, we don’t want to turn Facebook into a forum where people are voting up and down on people’s posts, that’s not the kind of community we want to create,” said the Facebook CEO and co-founder.

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“Over the years, we’ve come to realise that people are not always looking for an ability to down-vote posts. What they really want is for people to express empathy. Not everyone moment is a good moment. Whether you’re sharing something that is sad in current events like the refugee crisis or a family member passed away, then it may not feel comfortable to like that post,” he added.

He added that there need to be more options than just ‘like’ to express emotions on Facebook. “We’ve been working on this for a while. It’s surprisingly complicated to make an interaction that you want to be so simple. We’re going to be ready to test this soon and hopefully will roll it out soon,” said Zuckerberg.

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With AP inputs