Social media giant Facebook has announced plans for a “Dislike” button. During a town hall-style Q&A on Tuesday, founder Mark Zuckerberg said the company is gearing up to release the button to testers soon.
“People have asked about the ‘dislike’ button for many years, and 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, as reported by CNBC.
The new button is aiming to allow users to communicate feelings other than “like.” Instead, Zuckerberg explained that the button will allow you to “express empathy.”
“If you are sharing something that is sad…then it may not feel comfortable to ‘like’ that post,” he said.
The button may not say “Dislike,” but rather something more nuanced. Zuckerberg said he doesn’t want Facebook to become a forum in which your posts can be “downvoted,” as they can on Reddit and Imgur.
“That doesn’t seem like the kind of community that we want to create,” he explained. “You don’t want to go through the process of sharing some moment that was important to you in your day and have someone ‘downvote’ it.'”
Facebook just recently hit another milestone: 1 billion daily users.
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