Facebook's proposed "downvote" button is getting more testing in Australia and New Zealand after some users in the United States got to try it out in February.
The new button would allow users to give comments an "up" or "down" vote, but a Facebook spokeswoman told The Guardian that no decision has been made on whether the button will be rolled out to all of the social media network's 2.2 billion users.
A Facebook rep told The Hill that the downvote option is not a dislike button and the company wanted to test the new feature to see if it would be a "productive" option to determine how informative or constructive a comment is.
"Facebook is a place for free expression, but we also recognize that there should be a way for people tell us and each other which comments are most thoughtful and useful," the company spokeswoman told The Guardian. "To that end, we're running a test that introduces an upvote and downvote action for comments on large public page posts.”
"This feature allows people to push those thoughtful and engaging comments to the top of the discussion thread, and to move down the ones that are simply attacks or filled with profanity. This does not affect your personal News Feed or interactions with friends."
TechCrunch noted that a similar button has been used on social media sites Digg and Reddit.
Facebook added new reactions to supplement its "like button" in 2016, including negative responses like sad and angry, The Hill reported. The social media network, though, had not featured a dislike button, even though it was favored by some users.
"People have told us they would like to see better public discussions on Facebook, and want spaces where people with different opinions can have more constructive dialogue," a Facebook representative told TechCrunch.
"Our hope is that this feature will make it easier for us to create such spaces, by ranking the comments that readers believe deserve to rank highest, rather than the comments that get the strongest emotional reaction."
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