A DISLIKE button for Facebook, that will never HAPPEN, why?

Well, since the second public Q&A at Menlo Park, there was a buzz that Facebook is ready with Dislike Button.  The very first question of the session was about DisLike Button, and after watching the video, I felt this question was engineered for publicity purpose. As per some social watch analytics websites, there were over a 20 million posts/people talking about “DISLIKE” Button and I’m one of those 20 million. 🙂

Well, you could always think why do Facebook needs publicity, Zuckerberg’s one answer “We’re thinking about it” has generated over 20 million interactions, and still continue to do, and here I’m writing a blog about it. How strange…

The button they are considering Empathy Button. As per Mark Zuckerberg, “not every moment is a good moment.” He said that many users of the social network did not feel comfortable in “liking” unfortunate life events such as deaths, while others wanted to be able to express surprise or laughter. Zuckerberg added that the “unnamed” button wouldn’t work like Reddit’s up & down vote mechanism. Instead, he said, users would now have a technical way to express regret or sympathy in a situation. If I’m not over judging, it will be the refined version “What Are You Doing?” feature.

I always thought that a “Dislike” button would certainly make sense, and it will be a tool to show dissent over many posts that float around Facebook. But then, social media is no more a tool to only connect friends, but it is now an important business generating tool, and having a dislike button in a business model is a horrible and dangerous idea.

Why dangerous?
The negative impact this button would have on the user experience would be devastating and as a regular advertiser in Facebook, I would never want my boosted posts to be disliked. Since commenting provides a very active channel for communicating negative feedback and provides an option to delete the unwanted comments. I can’t imagine paying money to get negative likes, with no option to unlike/remove an un-liked post.

As advertisers we are all trading on the 4.5bn likes that are generated on a daily basis in Facebook so I don’t think Mark or Facebook is ready to lose this business just to satisfy few thousand users who wants a dislike button. Back in December 2014, Mark Zuckerberg said “Some people have asked for a dislike button because they want to say, ‘that thing isn’t good.” And that’s not something that we think is good for the world. Facebook understood hat would often feel playful to the “disliker” could often feel critical or judgmental to the recipient of the dislike.

Many users share content not because the content is rich, but to assess whether people respond to their thought process, now imagine that very thought process turns to be negative. If the user’s content is disliked this would therefore discourage that user to post something in the future. And will Facebook want that to happen? risking their user engagement, which we digital marketers are banking on. Social networking plays on user’s desire for acceptance. A “dislike” button could kill the motivating factor.

The “dislike” button is a real can of worms. It could open up a whole new sphere for trolls. Just imagine a friend of yours mistakenly clicks a dislike button of your baby’s picture? If Photos could be “disliked”, image-conscious people wouldn’t upload them. Photos are most important piece of content on Facebook. With all these observations and the never ending research from Facebook side it is nearly impossible to launch now or in future a DISLIKE button.