Facebook tests “downvote” feature for public posts

If you had lost hope that Facebook will ever be introducing a downvote button, there is a surprise for you. Facebook is finally testing a ‘downvote’ button. But there is a catch, this is a downvote button to flag fake news and negative comments, not to show your dislike for a certain post. For now, Facebook is testing this option with limited users. Through this feature, users can downvote abusive comments and register their complaints to the company.

On Thursday Facebook tested its new feature “downvote” with only 5% of the US English-speaking Android users. The option has begun to deal with the negative comments of any public post. The functionality of the button is quite close to long wished “Dislike button”.

“We are not testing a dislike button,” a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement. “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.”

The news begun to breakout after some users found out different options placed on a comment section of public pages post, Christina Hudler was among them who noticed this and responded on Twitter with the screenshot of her Facebook page feed.

According to reports on Twitter, when users select this DownVote button then 4 options pop up (Undo, Offensive, misleading, off-topic) from which you can select your feedback about the comment. This feedback might not be useful for the post publisher but is useful for Facebook.

“Downvote” do not affect comments ranking or the person who downvoted your comment.

While this feature is making headlines, some people have linked this with Reddit’s famous “Downvote” button. On the other hand, people believed it is resembling with “dislike” button.

Facebook first introduced ‘Like’ option in 2009 after that, many users signed a petition asking for a ‘Hate’ or ‘Dislike’ button, all of this public outrage resulted into different “emoji” reactions in 2015. But people are still in need of “dislike” button according to Facebook conducted research.

We are not sure whether this feature is for testing purpose or Facebook is really going to introduce this new feature worldwide. Since CEO of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg has announced to make Facebook free from negative content and emotions.