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Finally: Facebook is bringing you a dislike button
Wed, 16th Sep 2015
FYI, this story is more than a year old

Not everyone wants to like posts on Facebook. Sometimes something awful has happened and it gets posted on social media, and a user's only option is to comment, Like or ignore.

Now, finally, Facebook has announced it is bringing its users what it wants – a dislike button.

After years of Facebook users demanding an option to ‘dislike' a Facebook post, Facebook is finally giving in, with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg saying the company is working on offering Facebook users an expanded way of expressing their emotions.

“I think people have asked bout the dislike button for any years,” Zuckerberg said during a Q-A session Tuesday. “Today is a special day because today is the day I can say we're working on it and shipping it.

Zuckerberg explained the reason the social networking giant didn't initially design a dislike button was because it didn't want Facebook becoming like Reddit, where users can upvote and downvote posts.

“This isn't what we're here to build in the world,” he says.

However, Zuckerberg says he realised users weren't looking to downvote each other, but instead wanted an option to express feelings about posts other than “liking”.

“What they really want is the ability to express empathy,” he says. “Not every moment is a good moment.

Zuckerberg says Facebook has been working on the dislike button for some time, and hope to launch it soon. ‘

“It's surprisingly complicated to make an interaction that will be simple,” he says.