For years people have been either asking Facebook to add in a ‘dislike’ button, or spreading rumors that one is going to be coming in the near future. At Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s second “Q&A With Mark” session, this idea has finally been put to rest.
Zuckerberg said, “Some people have asked for a dislike button before. They want to be able to say that a thing isn’t good and that’s not something that we think is good for the world.” He went on to say specifically, “So we’re not going to build that. I don’t think there needs to be a voting mechanism on Facebook whether posts are good or bad.”
He did, however, acknowledge that there may be an option for expressing sentiments for situations when the ‘like’ button just doesn’t fit. With most people using Facebook to share news stories about disasters, or even announce the death of a loved one, it seems like something other than a like button would be needed.
Zuckerberg commented on this saying, “We’ve been thinking about it for quite a while. What’s the right way to make it so people can easily express a broader range of emotions, to empathize. Or to express surprise or laughter or any of these things. You can always just comment. But there’s something so simple about the like button.”
He went on, “I think giving people the power to do that in more ways with more emotions would be powerful. But we need to figure out the right way to do it so it ends up being a force for good and not a force for bad and demeaning the posts that people are putting out there.”
It seems like Facebook is seriously looking into other options, so we may be seeing some type of update in the future, which would be a nice improvement. It would definitely give marketers more options on how they can interact with users, and find out what types of posts are the most effective.
