Facebook Reveals It’s Officially Testing ‘Downvote’ Button

Facebook has admitted that is officially testing out a ‘downvote’ button in a new system similar to the one that Reddit and other social media sites have been using for years.

The ‘downvote’ option suddenly appeared in several users feeds last week in the comments section of posts within Facebook Memories and pre-selected Facebook groups.

According to the DailyBeast.com (who were the first to break the story) a Facebook representative initially denied when questioned that the social media giant was testing anything whatsoever to do with a dislike or downvote button, despite the abundance of screen-shot evidence… before explaining exactly why it was testing the new feature… “We are not testing a dislike button. We are exploring a feature for people to give us feedback about comments on public page posts. This is running for a small set of people in the US. only”, said the representative.

Facebook forced to reveal trial of new ‘downvote’ option, after years of saying it wouldn’t.

Fake news?

Facebook users will not however be able to downvote actual posts or stories. (Boo!) Instead the downvote button will be used to dislike specific comments. (Kind of Yay?)

The trial is currently only available for approximately 5% of English language users of Facebook for Android.

The button appears as a third option alongside the common “like” and “reply,” buttons already in use on comments accompanying a post. Users are then given the option to mark the post as either “offensive”, “misleading”, or “off topic”. The downvoted or disliked comment is then hidden from the user’s feed.

Thumbs down

The addition of a downvote option by Facebook is something of a U-turn  for company founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. He had previously said of downvoting options 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. That doesn’t seem like the kind of community we want to create.”

If the tests prove successful, it is assumed that the downvoting will be added for all Facebook users, just don’t ask anyone when.

The ‘downvote’ option suddenly appeared in several users feeds last week in the comments section of posts within Facebook Memories and pre-selected Facebook groups.

What manner of creature is this?

According to the DailyBeast.com (who were the first to break the story) a Facebook representative initially denied when questioned that the social media giant was testing anything whatsoever to do with a dislike or downvote button, despite the abundance of screen-shot evidence… before explaining exactly why it was testing the new feature…

“We are not testing a dislike button. We are exploring a feature for people to give us feedback about comments on public page posts. This is running for a small set of people in the US. only.”

Fake News?

Facebook users will not however be able to downvote actual posts or stories. (Boo!) Instead the downvote button will be used to dislike specific comments. (Kind of Yay?)

The trial is currently only available for approximately 5% of English language users of Android Facebook users.

The button appears as a third option alongside the common “like” and “reply,” buttons already in use on comments accompanying a post. Users are then given the option to mark the post as either “offensive”, “misleading”, or “off topic”. The downvoted or disliked comment is then hidden from the user’s feed.

Thumbs Down

The addition of a downvote option by Facebook is something of an about face for company founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. He had previously said of downvoting options 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. That doesn’t seem like the kind of community we want to create.”

If the tests prove successful, it is assumed that the downvoting will be added for all Facebook users, just don’t ask anyone when.

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The ‘downvote’ option suddenly appeared in several users feeds last week in the comments section of posts within Facebook Memories and pre-selected Facebook groups.

What manner of creature is this?

According to the DailyBeast.com (who were the first to break the story) a Facebook representative initially denied when questioned that the social media giant was testing anything whatsoever to do with a dislike or downvote button, despite the abundance of screen-shot evidence… before explaining exactly why it was testing the new feature…

“We are not testing a dislike button. We are exploring a feature for people to give us feedback about comments on public page posts. This is running for a small set of people in the US. only.””

Fake news?

Facebook users will not however be able to downvote actual posts or stories. (Boo!) Instead the downvote button will be used to dislike specific comments. (Kind of Yay?)

The trial is currently only available for approximately 5% of English language users of Facebook for Android.

The button appears as a third option alongside the common “like” and “reply,” buttons already in use on comments accompanying a post. Users are then given the option to mark the post as either “offensive”, “misleading”, or “off topic”. The downvoted or disliked comment is then hidden from the user’s feed.

Thumbs down

The addition of a downvote option by Facebook is something of a U-turn  for company founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. He had previously said of downvoting options 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. That doesn’t seem like the kind of community we want to create.”

If the tests prove successful, it is assumed that the downvoting will be added for all Facebook users, just don’t ask anyone when.