Thursday, December 11, 2014

Facebook's Zuckerberg Says Dislike Button Is a Bad Idea in Second Q&A



Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is not in favour of the much-requested 'Dislike' button.
In response to a query during his second Q&A session on Thursday at Menlo Park, Zuckerberg said that the Dislike button is not a good idea and Facebook isn't working on any such thing.
"Some people have asked for a dislike button before [..] they want to be able to say that a thing isn't good and that's not something that we think is good for the world. So we're not going to build that. I don't think there needs to be a voting mechanism on Facebook whether posts are good or bad. I don't think that's socially very valuable or good for the community," said Zuckerberg.
But one thing that he specifically pointed out was that Facebook thinking about alternative ways to express emotions, apart from the existing and only Like button. For example - the Like option for the death of loved one or an unfortunate incident seems inappropriate.

"We've been thinking about it for quite a while [..] what's the right way to make it so people can easily express a broader range of emotions, to empathize. Or to express surprise or laughter or any of these things. You can always just comment. But there's something that's so simple about the like button [..] I think giving people the power to do that in more ways with more emotions would be powerful. But we need to figure out the right way to do it so it ends up being a force for good and not a force for bad and demeaning the posts that people are putting out there."

Facebook had announced the second Q&A session back at the end of last month, and asked users on the dedicated Q&A with Mark page to post questions. Apart from the reason for the continued absence of the Dislike button, several other questions were answered by Zuckerberg at the Q&A, where he also took questions from users at the event.

The first Q&A saw Zuckerberg answering some interesting questions, from why the standalone Messenger app was forced on users for chats, to why he wears the same shirt every day. Zuckerberg also finally expressed his opinion on The Social Network movie, which had controversially pictured the events around the creation, founding and initial success of the firm.

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