For the moment, the new feature is being tested only in the US on only a few users. It seems that Facebook insisted on mentioning that the Button was not a ‘downvote’ button as some users were expecting. According to Facebook, it is one of the means whereby the social network is striving to create a better user experience and make improvements for the Facebook community.
Why is Facebook experimenting on this new feature?
According to news site tech Crunch, Facebook is concerned with giving people a chance to make their opinions on the comments to public page posts matter.
There are other social media platforms or sites that have already made similar features available for their users. For example, Reddit has a type of ‘donwvote’ button that diminishes the visibility of posts that are not popular.
How would the Facebook ‘donwvote’ button actually work?
It seems that the button is designed for the comments made to public posts. Thus, when the button is clicked on by a user who disapproves of a comment, the user no longer sees that comment from his profile as it gets instantly hidden. Then, a few other buttons appear, allowing the user to label the comment as either ‘off-topic,’ downright ‘offensive’ or simply ‘misleading.’ However, the comment would then be hidden only to the user who showed his or her disapproval by clicking on the button.
That is, the other Facebook users would still see it from their profiles. Moreover, the visibility of the post to which the comments were made would not be negatively impacted, so others would still be able to see the post in their news feeds.
Facebook had its share of criticism for not having an actual dislike button
According to tech analyst Martin Garner, Facebook’s effort to experiment on the new feature which is related to comments on public posts could be an effort to escape the burden of determining which posts are inappropriate and which posts are acceptable in the Facebook community.
Such opinions would suggest that the Mark Zuckerberg would prefer avoiding a situation in which Facebook became a publisher rather than a social platform because that could have a negative outcome on the business. As Martin Garner puts it, if Facebook gets more involved in establishing if the content posted by its users is inadequate or offensive, that would mean more effort for Facebook as it would not rely solely on the community when it comes to pinpointing such posts, and could affect the company.
Although an actual ‘dislike’ button is not being experimented on by Facebook, there are some users who have requested such a button. For now, the new button that Facebook is testing on some US users has been receiving both positive and negative reactions. It may be interesting news about the social platform.
