Facebook is finally going to have a "Dislike" button which many users have asked to add. This was revealed by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg during a Q&A session held at Facebook's headquarters in Menlo Park, California, CNBC reported.
"We have an idea that we're going to be ready to test soon, and depending on how that does, we'll roll it out more broadly," Zuckerberg, 31, said, adding that the button would be a way for people to express empathy.
He revealed that they are already "very close" to ready the button for testing. He also added that making something so "simple" is surprisingly complicated. People had been demanding for a "dislike" button for many years and is now being prepared by the company.
Facebook had been hesitant to launch a dislike button, but has recently realized that people want to "express empathy" on posts about unpleasant news, CNN reported. "Not every moment is a good moment," Zuckerberg added.
"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," he said. But he quickly clarified that the mechanism isn't for people to "down vote" posts of others but it is for times when it felt sensitive for clicking "like" on sad posts.
Prof. Andrea Forte, an expert in social and participatory media at Drexel University in Philadelphia, said that users will not suddenly turn on each other's posts.
"They may use a dislike button to express some negative emotions (like frustration with ads popping up in their feeds) but I doubt it will cause them to start wantonly disliking pictures of their friends' babies, dogs, cats and cooking experiments. I suspect it will mainly be used to express mild disapproval, or to express solidarity when someone posts about a negative event like a death or a loss," Forte said in an email to BBC News.
Town halls had been held by Zuckerberg--who was recently named the most powerful person in business and media by Vanity Fair--in order to update Facebook users on how they are working on new services.
This month, the Facebook CEO will be hosting another townhall-style Q&A with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to discuss "how communities can work together to address social and economic challenges."
A live-stream video of the interview will be posted on Zuckerberg's Facebook page and Modi's.
