Facebook is finally rolling out a dislike button.
Its users have long been asking for a way to show their disapproval of news, in addition to the famous Like button. But it is not exactly as one might expect.
Firstly, the button actually works as a downvote, indicated by an arrow rather than anything more disapproving like an upside-down thumb. And secondly, it is only available in
New Zealand and Australia, for now, and only on certain posts.
The introduction appears to be a test ahead of rolling it out on Facebook more broadly.
Facebook says the button is for voting down abusive or disrespectful comments, so that they will not get promoted to the top of a discussion. It mostly functions like the downvote button on
Reddit, allowing people to express their dislike of a comment. The feature should be able to make conversations on the platform less centred around those comments that generate the most engagement – whether good or bad.
Facebook has been struggling with how to integrate a dislike button since 2015. To solve that, it introduced its Reactions. But doing so introduced another problem: reacting angrily still counted as a reaction, and so content that made people upset was still being engaged with and promoted on the site.
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