The most requested feature on Facebook — aside from being able to block people who constantly talk about their children without them getting offended (probably) — is the introduction of a dislike button. Ever since Facebook allowed users to Like everything, they inevitably wanted to Dislike things in equal measure. Unfortunately, that’ll never happen.
Though Facebook hasn’t outright dismissed the notion of a dislike button, therefore leading to speculation surrounding the introduction of the feature frequently resurfacing, I can say with complete confidence that it isn’t going to happen. Despite the company having regularly introduced features that are similar to a dislike button — such as the “angry face” reaction emoji and the new thumbs down emoji that will soon be appearing in Facebook Messenger — we’ll never see a true dislike button. But why?
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The answer is a simple one: Facebook makes the vast majority of its money through advertising. Understandably, companies would not want to advertise on a platform in which the users could dislike their product, and as such Facebook will not afford its user base the tools with which to do so.
Facebook has introduced a thumbs down emoji on Messenger, but it’s not quite a dislike button.
Say, for instance, Disney had paid to advertise its latest film on the social network through sponsored posts and video ads. If users didn’t think much of the trailer, they could effectively dislike these posts and, if enough did so, this could become a negative talking point for the film. An example of this would be Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, which made headlines last year as a result of its trailer being the most disliked video in YouTube history. But while YouTube channels have the ability to disable the like and dislike bar, Facebook would not be able to allow companies to do the same because of how intrinsic the like button is to the Facebook experience. On the other hand, if Facebook granted users the ability to solely disable the dislike button, it would become ineffective and pointless.
Companies want to advertise online while minimizing the risk of a backlash from their audience, and the dislike button would therefore present an unnecessary risk to their public image. While most users would claim that they want a dislike button to simply be passive aggressive with the people on their friends list, in reality the launch of such a button would lead to a flurry of business pages being trashed and Facebook losing a lot of money as a result.
So there you have it. While Facebook may routinely tempt users with new features that are similar to a dislike button, unless the company suddenly wishes to lose a lot of money for the sake of promoting even more negativity on its social network, it’ll never make the light of day.
