As Facebook’s midlife crisis continues, the site is trailing something akin to that ‘dislike’ button people used to care enough to ask for.
But rather than actually call it that – and to more or less preserve the site’s ideological devotion to saccharine, cloying positivity - it’s called a ‘downvote’ instead, and can only be used on comments, not posts themselves.
The idea, says Zuck and co, is to ‘weed out’ comments which have ‘bad intentions’ or are ‘disrespectful’ – so in other words, the dubious stuff left by that weird guy you briefly lived in halls with who has channelled the sexual frustration of his early 30s into being a ‘provocative libertarian’.
So far, the ‘downvote’ is only being tested in Australia and New Zealand – though if you want to see what it looks like, just pop onto Reddit where the system has been used for years.
If it works, it could be a positive step towards making Facebook appealing again. Then all they will need is to implement a ‘mind-numbingly dull reminder my friends aren’t fun anymore’ button for all those baby pics, and we’ll be getting somewhere.
