Facebook is trying out a voting system for public posts which would allow users to “downvote” comments.
After trialling the upvote/downvote buttons on a handful of users earlier this year, “the company has made the feature widely available in Australia and New Zealand for the time being, in what appears to be some sort of advanced-stage test”, BGR reports.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
The new feature displays up and down arrows beside each comment on public posts. “The more upvotes it gets the higher that comment will appear below the original post,” says HuffPost.
Conversely, users would have to scroll down to see “downvoted” comments.
In a statement, Facebook said that the downvote function should not be seen as a “dislike” counterpart to the site’s existing “like” button.
“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,” they said.
“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.”
In theory, the change will allow users more power to police the site’s content by promoting helpful or constructive input while making irrelevant or offensive comments harder to find. However, the reality may turn out quite differently.
Message board Reddit has long offered users a downvote button, intended to serve a similar role as a winnower of irrelevant or unhelpful content, but users frequently complain that the tool is more often used to express disagreement and silence dissenting opinions.
-
6 of the world’s most accessible destinationsThe Week Recommends Experience all of Berlin, Singapore and Sydney
-
How the FCC’s ‘equal time’ rule worksIn the Spotlight The law is at the heart of the Colbert-CBS conflict
-
What is the endgame in the DHS shutdown?Today’s Big Question Democrats want to rein in ICE’s immigration crackdown
-
Epstein files topple law CEO, roil UK governmentSpeed Read Peter Mandelson, Britain’s former ambassador to the US, is caught up in the scandal
-
Iran and US prepare to meet after skirmishesSpeed Read The incident comes amid heightened tensions in the Middle East
-
Israel retrieves final hostage’s body from GazaSpeed Read The 24-year-old police officer was killed during the initial Hamas attack
-
China’s Xi targets top general in growing purgeSpeed Read Zhang Youxia is being investigated over ‘grave violations’ of the law
-
Panama and Canada are negotiating over a crucial copper mineIn the Spotlight Panama is set to make a final decision on the mine this summer
-
Why Greenland’s natural resources are nearly impossible to mineThe Explainer The country’s natural landscape makes the task extremely difficult
-
Iran cuts internet as protests escalateSpeed Reada Government buildings across the country have been set on fire
-
US nabs ‘shadow’ tanker claimed by RussiaSpeed Read The ship was one of two vessels seized by the US military
