Social media giant Facebook has bowed to longstanding pressure by trialing a “dislike” button for the first time, though not on its most popular platform used by almost two billion users.
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The thinking at Facebook appears to be that a “dislike” function breeds negativity – instead, for this projects, the company considers the thumbs down more of a “no” option to a direct question. To use the dislike button, you hover over a message and tap the emoji button to add a reaction.
Facebook’s Reaction button for posts were announced in 2016 as an alternative to the “Like” button. The social network has confirmed that it’s testing the two features within its Messenger platform, but only on a limited basis for now. Specifically, the Dislike feature, along with a few other Reactions are being added to Messenger. Those who have access to the new Dislike emoji will see a thumbs-down option next to the thumbs-up emoji. To facilitate reacting to a specific message, the user just needs to over over the message they want to respond to and select the emoji button. Apparently, Facebook takes user experience seriously, and, to this end, we might finally be seeing the elusive dislike button. Completing the top 10 Reaction users are Costa Rica, Belize, the United States, Brazil, and Uruguay.
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So while Facebook has no plans to introduce this feature officially, it’s good to see that they’re testing new ways to interact with messenger. However, Facebook said that, rather than a “like and dislike”, the company sees them more like a “yes and no” reaction. The current “Reactions” are the Like (thumbs up), Love (heart eyes), Lol (Laughing face), Wow (wide mouth), Sad (curved-down lips), and Angry (red-faced emoji). As per a new TechCrunch report, Facebook is testing out its highly requested feature, although it may not be where you expect it.
