What We Know About the Upcoming Facebook “Dislike” Button
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We’ve heard rumblings of a Facebook “dislike” button for quite some time. For years rumors have swirled around on the web claiming the social giant had plans to launch this feature. Users of the popular social site have also expressed desire to “dislike” certain types of posts.
In September Mark Zuckerberg cleared up these rumors, announcing that the company is indeed working on a “dislike” button. We’ve heard concerns from fitness business owners around the negativity this type of button could bring to Facebook. We wanted to help alleviate some of these concerns by sharing what we know about this button so far.
Empathy Not Negativity
First and foremost, the button will not actually be a “dislike” button. Zuckerberg did not provide much detail on the exact verbiage of the button, but did say that the goal of it will be to enable people to express empathy. Zuckerberg said, “It’s important to give people more options than just ‘like’ to help express empathy and sympathy. Not every moment is a good moment.” This button, which likely will be more of a “sympathize” than “dislike” expression, would help users show their condolences for a traumatic event like a death or loss.
While many claim they want the option of using a “dislike” button, we have a hunch that this type of button would only end up leading to hurt feelings. A Facebook engineer recently spoke out on the “dislike” button saying, “While many users love the idea of Facebook adding a dislike button, I don’t think there are many users who are dying to have their own content disliked.” Well said, Facebook engineer. Well said.
Facebook Will Not Become Another Reddit
Facebook has a good thing going for it, and is smart enough to know that adding a true “dislike” button would bring mass negativity to the site. Popular social site Reddit, which has received a fair share of negative press over the years, enables users to vote up and vote down various topics and discussions. The “like” and “dislike” buttons on Facebook will not act as a voting tool. People share freely and often on Facebook, and the implementation of a voting feature would likely limit many people’s desire to share content moving forward.
This Button Likely Will Not Apply to Pages
We’ve heard concerns from fitness business owners about people being able to “dislike” their page, and we think this would highly unlikely. Facebook does not want to turn its site into a source of negativity, nor does it want lucrative businesses to leave the site. Facebook is projected to have $7.7 billion in total digital ad revenue in 2015. There’s no way it would want to introduce something that would displease businesses, and as a result, hurt its revenue. We wouldn’t worry too much about people being able to “dislike” pages, as this would probably never happen.
This Button is Not Currently Available
Since Zuckerberg’s announcement, there have been several scammers posing as Facebook encouraging users to get the “newly introduced Facebook dislike button on your profile.” If you see any posts or ads on Facebook promoting this, don’t click. They’re a scam. While this button might be released first to beta users, Facebook will not make users jump through hoops to activate it. Just know that if you have to click off the site to implement it, it’s probably a scam.
It might be a couple months before clear details around this future button are released. In the meantime, we hope this article has helped clear up any initial concerns you might have about this button. Stay tuned to our blog as we’ll be sure to post an article once the new button is available.
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