Should Facebook have a dislike button?
The “like” button on Facebook seems a bit limited, it can’t possibly express all the feelings we have about a status, post, or link that we want to acknowledge, and even bolster up in some way. Facebook considered adding a dislike button, but have decided to not go through with it. For now, we are still stuck with “likes” only.
Every “like” helps a post be seen by others, and there are a lot of posts about someone’s death, or a sad situation, that we’d like to support, but don’t necessarily “like.” Then, there are the things we just outwardly disagree with, or maybe find offensive. Sometimes it would be nice to express this disapproval in some way, the way you can upvote or down vote on sites like Reddit, and the Disqus platform.
Many subreddits, especially ones that deal with sensitive topics, choose to not have a down vote feature, and Disqus has stopped showing down votes, even though they are still used to tally a “ranking” of comments.
Even though Mark Zucerberg and the higher ups at Facebook deemed a dislike button “too negative,” (can you imagine the feels if spiteful friends and family could “dislike” certain things just to get at you?) they are toying with ways to express a wider range of emotions with just a click.
“A lot of times people share things on Facebook that are sad moments in their lives,” Zuckerberg said Thursday at a question-and-answer session about the “like” problem. “What’s the right way to make it so people can easily express a broader range of emotions? To empathize?”
What do you think Facebook should do to address this issue?
