Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg has confirmed that the most popular social media site in the world is working on creating a “dislike” or “hug” button that will allow its 1.5 billion monthly users to acknowledge posts, but without approving the said post.
Zuckerberg has always been assaulted in various Q&A sessions with the question of whether Facebook is going to introduce a “dislike” button to accompany the popular “like” button. But only now the Facebook CEO confirmed that the company is working on it. He has suggested, however, that the button will not be called “dislike” and it will serve a different function than the one die-hard users demanded for so long.
Zuckerberg said that “We didn’t want to just build a dislike button because we don’t want to turn Facebook into a forum where people are voting up or down on people’s posts.” Truthfully, ever since inception, that was not the kind of community Facebook tried to create. The CEO declared that adding a “dislike” button would not prove benefic for the site and that he firmly believes that is not what Facebook users are looking for, but rather they want to have more ways to express their empathy. Zuckerberg says that they already have an idea that is in beta stage, and depending on how it goes he and his company may roll it out to public use.
The said button could allow users to empathize with other users’ posts without showing approval or disapproval. It is a bit hard to imagine what that would be.
Another common request of die-hard Facebook users has been a “hug” button. The supposed button could allow Facebook users to show that they care about a post but not “like” it. Think of all the posts dealing with deaths in the family, or other bad events or situations. In those cases, a “hug” button would probably be far more appropriate than a “like” button.
That is the safest assumption so far, considering Zuckerberg has mentioned two scenarios when responding to the question that asked what is the function of the new button: the death of a relative and the refugee crisis. Facebook’s inventor said that “It may not feel comfortable to like that post but your friends and people want to express that they understand and that they relate to you so I do think it’s important to give people more options than ‘like’.“
The hug emoticons have been used a lot on the social media service’s chat room days, long before the like button was introduced.
Photo Credits pixabay
