Cape Town – Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has confirmed the social network is building a “dislike” button.
Zuckerberg was speaking at a question and answer session on Tuesday when he fielded a question from Cairo on whether Facebook would allow for more options than simply the “like” button.
“Today is a special day because today is the day that we get to say that we’re actually working on it and are very close to shipping a test of it [dislike button],” Zuckerberg told the audience.
However, a visibly concerned Zuckerberg cautioned that a dislike button should not be used to abuse Facebook users.
“We didn’t want to turn Facebook into a forum where people are voting up or down on people’s posts. That doesn’t seem like the kind of community that we want to create.”
Instead, he said that the company realised that people on the giant social network wanted to express empathy with a dislike functionality.
Zuckerberg would not go into specifics, but said that the company was working on the project that would be tested “soon”.
Watch Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg talk about the "dislike" button in this online video:
- Follow Duncan on Twitter