Did anyone see last night’s Republican presidential debate? It’s all people are talking about on Facebook this morning. As you know, there is a lot of tension and dissension between the two parties and within the parties. Many FB friends give their take. This sounds like a perfect time for Facebook’s dislike button.
Two days ago, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced his company was working on a thumbs down ‘dislike button. This comes at the request of countless FB users. Zuckerberg said people have been pressuring him about a dislike button. The dislike is supposed to be used for posts deemed sad or negative events happening to the person. The dislike button isn’t supposed to be used toward the content of a post. For example, someone talks about a job loss, death in the family, disease diagnosis, divorce/break-up, or a bad news event that happened in their community. The dislike button is to express empathy toward the person enduring such events, as in saying, “I dislike this trauma or hard time you’re going through.” Zuckerberg said, “We really want the ability to express empathy. Not every moment is a good moment.” He talked about he and his wife’s fertility struggle as an example. To the best of my knowledge, there is no debut date set for the Facebook dislike button.
So it’s supposed to be used for empathy. But come on, guys. You know it’s going to be used, even abused, to judge someone else’s content. I and anyone with a little street smarts see it coming. Don’t get me wrong; I’m for the Facebook dislike button. That’s because I’m for anybody and everybody using their free speech, as long as it’s done in a non-threatening manner. ?But why do you think so many people are on Zuckerberg’s case to build a dislike button? Why do you think so many people want this button to begin with? What’s empathy got to do with it?