Facebook Reported Rolling Out ‘Downvote’ Feature to More Users

Nathan Ernest Olupot April 30, 2018

1 minute read

Facebook rumored dislike button might turn out to be the 'downvote' button. (Photo Courtesy: Amastra - Digital Marketing)

Early this year in February, we reported Menlo Park-based social networking firm, Facebook Inc. was working on a ‘Downvote’ button a disguise to a dislike button which Facebook CEO and Co-Founder, Mark Zuckerberg, on multiple occasions confirmed that the firm wasn’t ever bringing a ‘dislike’ button. One of the reasons he gave was that it may increase the rate of online bullying.

The downvote button was first spotted by Taylor Lorenz (@TaylorLorenz) who shared it on Twitter alongside – “Facebook is testing downvoting comments,” she wrote. This was way back in February and was seen in certain comments inside some posts by public pages to selected users.

So, after two months of wait, the social firm is reported rolling out the ‘Downvote’ feature to more users allowing them to register a negative reaction to comments on the social networking platform but it is not the “dislike” button users have long desired.

According to reports by IANS, clicking the button hides the comment for the user who taps it, then asks the user to say whether the comment was offensive, misleading, or off topic.

“Now, it appears the feature is rolling out to a greater number of users. The Reddit-style ‘downvote’ button aims to improve the quality of discourse on the platform,” TheNext Web reported on Monday.

As mentioned by the company spokesperson to TechCrunch, the idea behind this new feature is to signal the social media firm about a comment that is inappropriate, uncivil or misleading.

“We’re not testing a dislike button. We’re 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 U.S. only,” said the spokesperson to the tech news website.