The Facebook ‘Dislike’ button is a sort of social media unicorn for some users. It’s never existed, it’s never going to exist, yet there are still people out there clamoring for it. Not only that, but plenty of those users routinely fall into traps involving ‘dislike button’ hoaxes. It’s not as much of an issue as it was, oh let’s say a couple of years ago, but if you polled Facebook users you’d still get a large swath who say they’d love a button to show their disapproval.
Once again, this is never going to happen. First of all, the ‘Like’ button is not there for you. It wasn’t made for you. It was made for advertising purposes. Second, the concept of “disliking” is just too messy for Facebook.
Tech Radar recently spoke to former Facebook CTO Bret Taylor, who is pretty much the creator of the ‘Like’.
“[The dislike button] came up a lot. In fact even the language of the word like was something we discussed a lot as well. But regarding the dislike button, the main reason is that in the context of the social network, the negativity of that button has a lot of unfortunate consequences,” he said.
What’s interesting here is that Facebook apparently debated the concept of the dislike button long and hard before deciding it was a bad idea. It’s not as if Facebook created the like button, people began demanding a dislike button as a compliment, and Facebook thought about it and said no. From the very beginning, Facebook had no intentions of ever letting you “dislike” things on its site.
“I have the feeling that if there were to be a ‘dislike’ button is that you would end up with these really negative social aspects to it. If you want to dislike something, you should probably write a comment, because there’s probably a word for what you want to say … I’m not saying the ‘like’ button isn’t flawed would it be even more complex with a negative sentiment like ‘dislike’,” Taylor added.
And that’s the other reason you’ll never, ever, ever, get a real dislike button. It’s hateful. Sure, it has its non-spiteful uses. I’m so heartbroken my little dog smacky died…, for instance, could be given a dislike. That’s fair.
But more often than not, a dislike button would be used in a more negative manner. Man, that guacamole you made looks like shit … DISLIKE.
Image via zeevveez, Flickr Creative Commons