Load the Game

Facebook CEO discusses the possibility of a dislike button

• Egon Kilin
• December 12th, 2014

Facebook already features the notorious ‘Like’ button, but what about a ‘Dislike’ option? I’m sure everybody felt the need to show what they really think about someone’s bad posts at least one time in their lives, I know I certainly did. Although the option has been demanded by users for the longest time it seems like the folks running Facebook are not willing to implement it just yet. CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently stated during a Q&A session that an actual ‘Dislike’ button is unlikely to happen because it’s “not good for the community.” The CEO admitted that many people have asked the company for it so that “they can say something isn’t good” but it looks like the users were ultimately not able to persuade him.

However, Zuckerberg is also definitely aware that there are situations in which the ‘Like” button doesn’t help express how you really feel about a certain post on Facebook. The CEO seems to be thinking about implementing something similar to a ‘Dislike’ button, or at least buttons that express various other emotions, but he doesn’t seem ready to talk much about his plans for the future of Facebook at the moment. “The thing I think are really valuable is there are more sentiments just than people like something, there are things in people’s lives that are sad, or that or tragic, and people don’t want to Like them. We’ve talked about for a while how can people express a wider range of emotions like surprise,” Zuckerberg said.

While a real Dislike options will probably not be added any time soon, it seems probable that we will soon have some other options for those times when the Like button just doesn’t cut it. I, for one, believe that the Facebook community will wholeheartedly embrace any additional features that allow us to better express ourselves. An actual Dislike button would certainly come in handy but I guess we’ll just have to take what can get.