Would a “Dislike” Option Improve Facebook?
The dislike button, its one of the most requested options when it comes to Facebook, but why are so many people so eager to dislike content? We already have the angry reaction after all. Facebook’s most recent experiment on this front came just last year, when it ran a test of an upvote/downvote option for comments, which was intended, according to Facebook, not to offer a means to disagree, but to lessen the impact of comments that were made with bad intentions.
That test disappeared after a few weeks, and we have not seen anything on it since, but it does show that Facebook is still considering how a downvote/dislike system could work, and whether it could be beneficial for the platform more broadly. And recently, Reddit user Jamie Tallica suggested another potential option for Facebook dislikes – to stop the spread of hate speech on the platform. As per Talica’s Reddit post:
“Imaging being a generally ignorant, racist, bigoted idiot and commenting something obscene online? You might post a comment that really offends 18,000 out of 20,000 people, but it shows 2k likes from like minded people. This sends out the wrong message – this tells people who are just passing that the option is popular, there is a lack of balance without the effort of commenting and getting involved in a spat. Add a dislike function and suddenly the comment has 2k likes, but 18k dislikes, which tells people this is an unpopular viewpoint and might make people think twice about what they say, or take a rain check on their attitude.”
That is an interesting suggestion – as Tallica points out in another section of his post, commenting merely opens up argument and leads to further disagreement, whereas being able to simply indicate your dislike of the content, with a quick, unintrusive action, could help to make your position clear – and could see less popular opinions highlighted as such, rather than users being left with the wrong impression of their popularity.
The same could be said of fake news and misinformation – if a user shares a fake news story, you could use a dislike option to indicate that that angle is incorrect. Right now, people will often use the “Angry” Reaction for this purpose, but “Angry” can just easily insinuate that you are angry about the content itself, not the validity of it. A dislike option could help make unpopular angles clearer, in their wider societal context, and may help reduce their spread.
Just recently, YouTube raised the suggestion that it might consider removing its own “dislike” option in order to stop what’s become known as “downvote mobs”, or in translation YouTube’s excuse on why its 2018 Rewind clip quickly becoming the most downvoted video of all time, currently at 15 million dislikes. I personally do not agree that YouTube should remove the dislike option, the dislike button is a great way for people to voice their opinion on something without commenting and potentially voicing an “offensive” opinion.
So, my conclusion after all of this is that a dislike option should be implemented not only does it give people a way to voice if they do not agree with you, but it also ensures that there are now hateful discussions in the comments section below.
Callum Stringfellow - Limitless Digital