Ever since the early days of its conception, Facebook has revolutionized the way we interact with information — one of the most important being the way we categorize it: with "likes," "comments" and "shares." There is one emotion, however — manufactured in large quantities on social media networks like Facebook — that's hard to neatly wrap up: empathy.
"I think people have asked about the dislike button for many years," Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said in a Q&A at Facebook's headquarters. "Today is a special day because today is the day I can say we're working on it and shipping it."
The shift comes after a very palpable limitations to the way people interact with news on Facebook — "what they really want is the ability to express empathy. Not every moment is a good moment," says Zuckerberg.
Zuckerberg is weary of the Reddit model, where upvotes get a post more attention while downvotes do the opposite. The whole idea of the upcoming "dislike" button is to let users express feelings other than simply "liking."
There is no word on when this feature will go live. All Zuckerberg offers is that "it's surprisingly complicated to make an interaction that will be simple."
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