Zuckerberg announces Facebook ‘dislike’ button
The social network’s CEO said the tool should be used to ‘express empathy,’ not to ‘downvote’ posts.
CNBC reported that on Tuesday, Facebook’s co-founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, announced the news during a Q&A session:
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.
Facebook has been firm in its stance against creating a “dislike” button. In October 2014, the social network’s former CTO, Bret Taylor, explained the reason behind the decision:
The “dislike” button “came up a lot. In fact, even the language of the word like was something we discussed a lot as well. But regarding the ‘dislike’ button, the main reason is that in the context of the social network, the negativity of that button has a lot of unfortunate consequences.
Zuckerberg expressed a similar sentiment during Tuesday’s Q&A, saying the goal behind the “dislike” button is to make it a tool to “express empathy,” not to hurt other users:
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