People have been requesting for it for years, but Facebook seems adamant about not launching a “dislike” button opposite the other reaction buttons, because it would “sow too much negativity”. But it looks like they may be testing out the next best thing, which is a way to downvote comments so that the ugly or trollish ones can be pushed down so that “negativity’ goes away. This seems to be running for a small set of users in the US.
A Facebook spokesperson denied that they were testing out a dislike button. Instead, what they are doing is to see how users will be able to give feedback not about the posts but about the comments in posts that are set to public. The way that they’re looking at doing that for now is through a downvote button that people can click on if they consider that comment to be offensive or irrelevant to the discussion or maybe if they just don’t like the comment.
If the downvote concept sounds familiar, it’s because reddit has been using it for years. Reddit founder and CEO Alexis Ohanian noticed that of course and tweeted that he wished he had trademarked it. People on the network can upvote or downvote comments on the various threads and Facebook seems to have been taking notice and maybe adapting it for its own.
The downvote for comments is being tested among a small group of users and of course there’s no way to force yourself into that subset. Let’s see if this will eventually be a thing and how it will affect discussions on Facebook. As with everything else on the Internet, it can be useful but also prone to abuse.
VIA: The Daily Beast
