The public outcry for a ‘dislike’ button on Facebook has been present for some time and it seems as though developers have finally listened…but only slightly. The social media site are apparently trialing a new feature that lets you thumbs down a message on Messenger.
The site have previously claimed that the introduction of such a button was not something that they wished to include as it may be used to ‘demean’ the posts of others but the trial taking place in the Messenger app allows you to quickly respond to messages with an emoji. Like the news feed reactions which were introduced last year, users can hover over the message and choose from a set of emojis; love, lol, wow, sad, angry, thumbs up and thumbs down. If you’re in a group message, the reactions will be seen by everyone in the thread. They won’t show up for every user straight away, though. The new feature is being trialed to only a few users initially and will probably only make it’s way to the rest of the site if it is deemed useful.
Facebook have marketed the thumbs down button as a ‘no’ option (if you’re deciding where to go for lunch, let’s say) rather than a ‘dislike’, however, although it accepts that eventually it will be used for the latter. A statement from Facebook said “We’re always testing ways to make Messenger more fun and engaging. This is a small test where we enable people to share an emoji that best represents their feelings on a message.”
This update is similar to what we saw in iOS10 for iMessage whereby users are able to use Tapbacks to respond to a message quicker and with a pre-programmed reaction. With Apple, these include a heart, thumbs up, thumbs down, “ha-ha”, two exclamation marks and a question mark.
Who knows, maybe one day Facebook will eventually hear our cries and introduce a firm ‘dislike’ option for when we find a status that really grinds our gears. Until then, we’ll have to make do with the angry face.
