Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, said on Tuesday at Townhall Q&A session that he's working out on a button that would express empathy over sad posts on Facebook.
Mark Zuckerberg revealed during the Townhall Q&A at Facebook HQ that many people request a dislike option. "People have asked about the 'dislike' button for many years, and probably hundreds of people have asked about this, and today is a special day because today is the day that I actually get to say we are working on it, and are very close to shipping a test of it," CNBC reported.
Zuckerberg said he's been reluctant for quite some time to add the dislike button as it opposed Facebook's positive environment. He doesn't want the social media to look like a forum where people downvote for a post.
"You don't want to go through the process of sharing some moment that was important to you in your day and have someone 'downvote' it," he added.
Mark cited an instance when someone posted something sad. He mentioned a situation about the refugee crisis, the victims of natural disasters or someone's death. Though people want to empathize with them, it would be inappropriate to like the posts. So the company develops an option for the people to convey sadness.
Tech Crunch clears out that probably, the option is less likely to be named as 'dislike'. The way Zuckerberg described it, they came to understand that people wanted to express empathy and not to dislike the post itself.
He said it is important to have other choices instead of just the 'like' button, so people can share their emotions in the right manner.
Unexpectedly, he was surprised that the button he wanted to be as simple as possible was difficult to create. But he confirmed they are about to test it. "We have an idea that we think we're going to be ready to test soon, and depending on how that does, we'll roll it out more broadly," the CEO stated in a video he posted on Facebook.
Perhaps, it could either be a sad or an empathy button. Whichever it might be, Facebook certainly hears you.
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