While Facebook has said that a “dislike” button is out of the question in the past, with The Daily Beast quoting the company as saying it would “sow too much negativity” within the already fragile ecosystem, things may soon be changing somewhat. In an exclusive report, The Daily Beast points out that Facebook seems to be testing the ability for users to “downvote” certain comments.
The concept is similar to what is seen on Reddit, with users sending some posts to the top with their votes or thrusting them into obscurity with their thumbs down:
The test appeared for several users on Thursday in the comment section of posts within Facebook groups and on old Facebook memories content. Users shared screenshots with The Daily Beast.
A Facebook spokesperson denied that the company is “testing a dislike button” before giving information about why it is performing the test.
“We are not testing a dislike button. We are exploring a feature for people to give us feedback about comments on public page posts. This is running for a small set of people in the U.S. only.”
The idea of giving users more control over the content that will appear on their feed seems to be part of the larger initiative hinted at by Mark Zuckerberg to move the company away from third-parties stuffing news feeds.
As The Daily Beast points out, this could easily be a tool for abuse in the wrong hands. While users could censor and sanitize language they deem inflammatory, what is to stop a company from doing the same when someone shares a complaint about their product?
It seems to only be a small test at the moment, so we will all just need to wait and see how this works out. But when Grandma decides to downvote that new picture of your family at Christmas, will Facebook be there to stop the war that erupts?
(Via The Daily Beast)