Washington: Facebook, pressed for years by users to add a “dislike” button, announced Tuesday it was working on the feature and will be testing it soon.
“We`ve finally heard you,” CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg told a public town hall meeting in Facebook`s hometown of Menlo Park, California.
A question submitted online by a user asked the oft-repeated question of why there were no buttons along the lines of “I`m sorry”, “interesting” or “dislike” in addition to the classic thumbs-up “like” button, through which users show their support for posts by friends, stars and brands on the social network.
“Probably hundreds of people have asked about this, and today is a special day because today is the day where I actually get to say we are working on it and are very close to shipping a test of it,” Zuckerberg said.
“It took us a while to get here… because we don`t want to turn Facebook into a forum where people are voting up or down on people`s posts. That doesn`t seem like the kind of community that we want to create.”
He said he understood that it was awkward to click “like” on a post about events such as a death in the family or the current refugee crisis and that there should be a better way for users to “express that they understand and that they relate to you.”
“We`ve been working on this for a while, actually. It`s surprisingly complicated to make,” Zuckerberg added.
“But we have an idea that we think we`re getting ready to test soon, and depending on how that goes, we`ll roll it out more broadly.”