Facebook is testing a new feature that lets users to downvote the negative comments they consider inappropriate for the community. It gives you a way to signal that you do not approve of something.
And no, the new feature being tested isn’t a long-desired thumbs-down “dislike” button. This downvote button only intended to be a method to flag and hide inappropriate comments on public posts. Clicking the downvote button hides the comment for the user who taps it, then asks them to say whether the comment was “offensive”, “misleading”, or “off topic”.
I now have #FacebookDownvote on sponsored posts in my feed! #smm #socialmediamarketing #socialmedia #digitalmarketing pic.twitter.com/BKZyS25ZEZ
— Christina Hudler (@officialhudler) February 8, 2018
On Thursday, Facebook confirmed to various media outlets that it is now testing the “downvote” button on a limited set of ‘public page post’ comment reels and also condemned that this new feature was in any way a dislike button.
“We are not testing a dislike button. 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 U.S. only,” a Facebook spokesperson said.
It’s unclear if the feature will ever be rolled out to all users. If rolled out publicly, this will allow an individual to dislike comments and help the negative statements push to the bottom of the comments feed.
This step could be seen as a means to promote healthy discussion and meaningful interaction among the users on the social networking platform. This move can also be connected to the recent push being made by the company to show more news feed from friends and family and less commercial or sponsored items.
