{"id":4172,"date":"2016-02-10T08:47:47","date_gmt":"2016-02-10T03:17:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/teekhapan.wordpress.com\/?p=4172"},"modified":"2016-02-10T08:47:47","modified_gmt":"2016-02-10T03:17:47","slug":"why-facebook-does-not-have-a-dislike-button","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vivekkaul.com\/2016\/02\/10\/why-facebook-does-not-have-a-dislike-button\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Facebook does not have a dislike button"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"facebook-logo\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A few days back a couple I am friends with on Facebook \u2018announced\u2019 the arrival of their child into the world, on Facebook. The \u2018announcement\u2019 read like a press release and seemed more like an announcement of a new \u2018product launch\u2019 than the arrival of a new baby.<\/p>\n

When I was cribbing about this to a friend, she asked, how else could they have done it? \u201cThey could have just said, we became parents,\u201d I replied.
\nThis wasn\u2019t the only case. In the past I have seen couples \u2018announce\u2019 their weddings, their \u2018engagements\u2019 and even their \u2018honeymoons\u2019 on Facebook, making it sound more like a new \u2018joint venture\u2019 between two companies than the coming together of two individuals.<\/p>\n

In fact, one Facebook friend even uploaded extremely intimate pictures of his week-long honeymoon on a daily basis and marked it with headings like Day 1, Day 2, Day 3 and so on. This led me to comment that we live in an era where we see honeymoon updates of people whose weddings we don\u2019t attend.<\/p>\n

Honestly, it is at moments like these when I really wish Facebook had a dislike button as well. The trouble with Facebook is that you can only like something, but the moment you do not like something, there is no way you can go about expressing it immediately. While one can always write a comment, but that needs some mental effort, which is not always forthcoming when one is Facebooking.<\/p>\n

So the question is why does Facebook only have a like button? As Dan Ariely writes in Behavioural Economics Saved My Dog<\/em>: \u201cFacebook \u201cLike\u201d button is much more than a way for us to react to other people. It is a social-coordination mechanism that tells us how we can, and should respond. It subtly gives us instruction on what is OK (and not OK) to post and it gently tell us how we can and can\u2019t behave on Facebook.\u201d<\/p>\n

And why does Facebook not have a dislike or a hate button? As Ariely\u00a0 explains: \u201cAdding buttons such as \u201cDislike\u201d or\u00a0 \u201cHate\u201d would\u00a0 change our mindset when we read different posts; it would prompt us to have more negative reactions and I suspect that very quickly it would destroy this social network\u2019s positive atmosphere.\u201d<\/p>\n

This explains why Facebook does not have dislike or a hate button. While the atmosphere does turn nasty on Facebook once in a while, on the whole it has a positive atmosphere. In fact, Ariely even suggests that \u201cfor what it\u2019s worth my preference would be to add a button for \u201cLove\u201d.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is something that Twitter did recently wherein they added a heart button which signifies \u201clike\u201d. Earlier this used to be called the \u201cfavourite\u201d button.<\/p>\n

Anyone who has used Twitter extensively would know that the medium has a very negative atmosphere on the whole unlike Facebook. It\u2019s a medium where you have many people fighting, criticising, abusing and misleading, all the time.<\/p>\n

Other than births and marriages, people also announce the deaths of their loved ones on Facebook. Now this is a tricky situation. Often such \u2018announcements\u2019 are accompanied by a very emotional write-up, which as a reader you may want to like, but then how do you like a post announcing someone\u2019s death? This doesn\u2019t stop people from liking posts which announce deaths of individuals as well.<\/p>\n

As Mark Zuckerberg chairman and chief executive of Facebook said sometime late last year: \u201cNot every moment is a good moment, right? And if you are sharing something that is sad, whether it\u2019s something in current events like the refugee crisis that touches you or if a family member passed away, then it might not feel comfortable to Like that post.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat [users] really want is the ability to express empathy. Not every moment is a good moment,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

I for one am waiting for some sort of an empathy button. Maybe a hug button to start with. How about you, dear reader?<\/p>\n

(Vivek Kaul is the author of the Easy Money <\/em>trilogy. He tweets @kaul_vivek)<\/p>\n

The column originally appeared in the Bangalore Mirror on February 10, 2016<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few days back a couple I am friends with on Facebook \u2018announced\u2019 the arrival of their child into the world, on Facebook. The \u2018announcement\u2019 read like a press release and seemed more like an announcement of a new \u2018product launch\u2019 than the arrival of a new baby. When I was cribbing about this to … <\/p>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"qubely_global_settings":"","qubely_interactions":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,29],"tags":[876,1009,1200,2105,3816],"qubely_featured_image_url":null,"qubely_author":{"display_name":"Vivek Kaul","author_link":"https:\/\/vivekkaul.com\/author\/vivekkaul\/"},"qubely_comment":4,"qubely_category":"Bangalore Mirror<\/a> Easynomics<\/a>","qubely_excerpt":"A few days back a couple I am friends with on Facebook \u2018announced\u2019 the arrival of their child into the world, on Facebook. The \u2018announcement\u2019 read like a press release and seemed more like an announcement of a new \u2018product launch\u2019 than the arrival of a new baby. When I was cribbing about this to…","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vivekkaul.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4172"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vivekkaul.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vivekkaul.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vivekkaul.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vivekkaul.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vivekkaul.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4172\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vivekkaul.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vivekkaul.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vivekkaul.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}