Facebook seems to have forgotten that part of the idea of social in it’s service is disparagy. As the lobby for a “dislike” button on Facebook grows, and people realise that this thing that they’ve never wanted, now that they’ve heard of it, is a fantastic idea and decry the lack of such a feature to spread negativity as well as positivity amongst your group of friends. The Internet has to have balance, after all, so maybe it’s even our human right to have a dislike button.
LIKE THE DISLIKE!
In case the title, and the sarcasm that I hope I conveyed into the opening paragraph, didn’t give it away, I’m joking.
As if social networks weren’t enough of a social angst-machine for teenagers already, people seriously want to add more features to contribute to the hormonal gumbo by petitioning Facebook to include a “dislike” button, alongside the common “like” button, to allow users to express distaste or outright hatred for someone’s status or other profile changes.
Now, one might say that considering there’s a “like” option, fairness, equality and freedom of speech DEMAND that the other side of the coin is also considered, many of those people I’d assume to simply be lazy. If they honestly think that the exclusion of a simple button chokes freedom of speech, then they are either too lazy to have properly checked Facebook or else too lazy and inarticulate to comment your distaste. In many ways, the lack of a dislike button maintains Facebook’s public image as a social network that grown-ups can use, as the only way to express distaste for something is to comment about it. If you write a disparaging comment on some post or another, then you’re called upon to justify your opinion or express, with varying degrees of articulation, your reasoning for disagreeing with a view, which is perfectly within your rights, rather than being the one simply making a disgusted noise and moving on. No mature person would make a negative comment on something without an explanation that was at least reasonable to them, and if they did it’s generally ignored by the populus (does anyone actually pay attention to YouTube comments?). But a “dislike” button both allows one to do so and makes it far easier than considering an articulate response, just as many will “like” instead of show support through comments – clicking one button is easier than typing.
Obviously, I’m focusing on the idea of “dislike”-ing something in a malicious sense, and with the tabloid furore surrounding cyberbullying, this is the most prominent factor to consider. I’m not saying that a dislike button couldn’t be used to express sympathy for someone posting bad news on Facebook, but that returns to me unjustification arguement as it seems insincere, almost hollow, to simply click a button to express, as in my example, sympathy rather than commenting something encouraging or even, dare I say it, comforting them in reality. Almost all ways in which a “dislike” button would be used in a non-malicious way were better done in a more genuinely caring way than a cold yet curteous nod.
Perhaps I’m overestimating the potential of such a minor feature to upset the social continuum, perhaps I’m not. The presence of a “like” button isn’t without it’s faults either, though most of my arguements thus far won’t apply. A friend of mine (who I know reads this blog but only to make sure I’m not saying anything bad about her) recentely broke up with her boyfriend, resulting in the obvious posts on facebook saying “X is now Single”/”Y is now Single” – when her ex-boyfriend’s facebook contained the message “Y is now Single” his own friends were very quick to “like” it – causing upset to my friend.
Furthermore, the unjustified arguement that I have discussed can become a further limit on freedom of speech, as if someone expresses an opinion, laudes their religious/political/social/sexual views and someone “dislikes” it – it is someone simply condemning or otherwise criticising, as I have said repeatedly, without justification. Of course, one can comment their criticism, but at least then that opens the floor for debate and expressing well formed opinions instead of just being trigger happy on the “dislike” button, it’s akin to saying “I’m right and you’re wrong”. Which, in turn, discourages people from expressing such an opinion on facebook for fear of being so cleanly knocked down. Again you might say I’m exaggerating, but can any of you honestly say you’ve never been made worried by even the smallest detail of something that has appeared on Facebook? People can be affected severely by what people do and don’t do on Facebook, and now people push for a feature that’s going to make it worse.
I’ve given an illustration of how people can be affected by minor features of a social network, now people want to add a very similar feature that is specifically designed to carry negative connotations. Why is everyone so eager to push for this, as if there isn’t enough negativity in the world, when it is a feature that can only really be used badly?
But, several thousand-strong Facebook groups disagree with me, and amongst all my babbling about freedom of speech it’d seem a bit crass of me to not remind readers that there is a discussion-box at the bottom of each post (if you can’t see it try clicking the title of the post) and I’d love to hear your opinions on this. Do you like the dislike or dislike the dislike?
Honestly Mat I couldn’t agree with you more. Until people learn to use the internet in a mature way (which will NEVER happen) there’s no room for encouraging cowardly hate, all the dislike button will do will provoke more hate.
It’s like the ‘Top Friends’ feature, honestly? Whose retarded idea was that? People can’t handle that sort of thing, and the fact that there are masses of people ‘protesting’ for lazy hatred shows that there’s obviously going to be trouble.
Facebook will bring it in, and before even a week it’ll get removed, people who don’t know how to use the report system will abuse it with they’re petty cries of ‘B’AAAWWWW THEY DISLIKED MY STATUS’. Facebook will get sick of it and remove it to save time.
But of course that is humanity, it’s sad that they have to experience it for even a small amount of people to learn anything.
Most countries in the third world never respects intellectual property rights. piracy is so rampant in asian countries.~-.
intellectual property is not really respected in most countries in asia where piracy is so rampant.;-,
there are so many intellectual property and copyright violations these days’~:
intellectual property is not observed by poor countries in the third world, in fact they like piracy`~:
intellectual property is always a concern these days because of the very fast update in technology:-~
in China, they do not respect intellectual property at all. too many software and movie pirates out there ,’,
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