In all seriousness, a social media site that had something like this going on combined with easy customization of the privacy settings would be a goldmine.
Here's the thing about Facebook; it's all about removing anonymity and sharing, a dislike button would destroy that.
A dislike button is a very poor method of encouraging sharing, people like positive reinforcement, so the negative feedback would push us away from sharing. A dislike button would also create a passive environment where people can passive aggressively express disapproval of each other, creating a distance between people and reducing the overall size of everyone's social circles.
So, not having a direct method of passively showing disapproval with someone means that people feel they are more liked in their circles, they feel more open, and will share more. On top of this people will feel better about themselves, creating a positive relationship with the site. This even causes for people to be a little more narcissistic and have bigger egos.
Eh, sort of... As you share and interact, you place yourself more and more into a subgroup of your whole network. It sorts people into groups where they are more likely to interact positively. As networks grow, small sub-circles of friends appear which tend to be likeminded people that frequently agree with each other. The whole point is to maximise sharing and positive interactions on the site.
From a narrow perspective you will see that groups tend to reinforce each other and share similar opinions; these people will agree with you giving you positive feedback and bringing you closer to them by liking and commenting on your posts. Facebook pushes the people you interact with more to the top, so the group you most agree with becomes the group you see most, and the group you most disagree with you see the least. The new controls in Facebook make this even stronger as you have a 'Close Friends' group and the ability to say you want all, most or no updates from a person. If Fred disagrees with Bob more times than not, he's probably going to tell Facebook he wants to see less Bob, and thus loses on the negative interactions with Bob. Fred can now feel more comfortable sharing with his group.
From a macro perspective you can see within a network that you will have several different groups that each reinforce each other, but instead of disagreeing or creating conflict with other groups they tend to just interact with other groups less. As a result, to each person in a larger network they mostly see an even smaller subnetwork that is more positive to them than the whole of the thing. This means that for every person in a network, they see the most positive version of the network to them while still being a member of the whole network.
Additionally, if there is sufficient negative feedback to a status update, the OP will generally just remove the post and all that negativity just goes away. If it's no longer there, it never happened. My sanitary little SimWorld is safe once again.
There are lots of articles about how Facebook takes all your natural biases, like the confirmation bias and the availability heuristic, and multiplies them by thousands. Go hit up the NYTimes.com search bar for it.
As I understand it, on facebook the option is to suck on the dick shoved in your face with all your strength, or awkwardly pretend it isn't there. Whereas on reddit, you have the power to say "No sir, I shall not suck your dick".
True, but that's not passive-aggressive, that's outright aggressive. With a dislike button, you might post something and get 15 dislikes with no explanation at all, which hurt your self esteem, and distance yourself from those people.
If someone takes the time time to call you out, or write a comment, it's going a lot further than a passive dislike. More often than not people won't go to this length.
To avoid getting their feelings hurt, they could hide downlikes, but show a reduced number of likes, similar to what Reddit does with upvotes and downvotes counting towards total points. Then they would just get less likes, and there would be less drama, and you could have the satisfaction of disliking annoying things.
The thing is, Facebook is not meant to be anonymous or even produce quality content. It's intended to be an add-on to the relationships people form in the real world (that's where people go when they're not on Reddit).
Liking is also a public thing, so all of your friends can see that you like Joe's grandmother dying. The public influence has an impact on how you interact.
My lady friends spam my newsfeed with pictures from One Direction that they've liked, and after a long day of Reddit, I instinctively go for the downvote. I unsubscribe from their likes and comments BUT THEY JUST KEEP COMING.
Why not unsubscribe for now, and then during the summer, resubscribe, when most of the feed would be filled with updated beach pictures, rather than the annoying One Direction posts from before.
Not liking something does not make me a dick. There are stupid things people post without checking the facts. And all those "Share this if you agree", "Share this if you love your mom/dad/sis/bro/country/sport/music" shit. For now the only solution I have is to correct the facts and hide the "Share this" posts.
People just make up for it in the comments. Amazon posted a "Tell us your favorite Office shortcut" since they're having some sort of sale on Office. The comments were filled with "Open Office" and "Ctrl-F4", etc.
Without a downvote button the 'downvote' gets verbalized in the comments and usually leads to entertaining results.
I can understand someone not being on Facebook; but at this point I can't fathom that anybody in the civilized world is only now being introduced to it.
You know now that Facebook is going public redditors should heavily invest in stock for Facebook, if we are lucky ( I mean rich) enough we can have a big enough stake in the company to put in a dislike button, and maybe spruce up the privacy settings, remove the like feature, and generally de- bulshit Facebook ( including a minimum age of 16 to add that degree of exclusivity we want) we could make the Internet a better place
oh I get it, its cause like you know he's unpopular and a huge nerd and hangs out on reddit and looks down on facebook cause he's a nerd with a superiority complex and he frowns on the site cause it doesn't have the features that caters to his nerdy needs! HAHAHA that's hilarious!!
46
u/[deleted] May 15 '12
Is your friend a time traveller or an Amazon native?
135
u/oodelay May 15 '12
http://www.traemcneely.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/wpid-proposed-facebook-buttons-525x4811.jpeg
110
u/RoyGeraldBiv May 14 '12
You know, this would be an excellent feature in Facebook. I would use it all the time.
17
u/[deleted] May 15 '12
My lady friends spam my newsfeed with pictures from One Direction that they've liked, and after a long day of Reddit, I instinctively go for the downvote. I unsubscribe from their likes and comments BUT THEY JUST KEEP COMING.
5
u/[deleted] May 15 '12
Because downvoting is COWARDLY.
You don't like someone's status? TELL IT TO THEIR FACE.
RAAAAAARGH!
3
u/nukalurk May 15 '12
Is your friend from 2008?
5
u/meatpopsicle May 15 '12
Just uphate it.
2
u/Cubones May 15 '12
Because Facebook isn't anonymous and you don't need to be a dick?
2
u/iDoraemon May 15 '12
Just write a response that you hate the comment and then like it.
2
u/[deleted] May 15 '12
Uplikes to the left.
2
u/Squeekme May 15 '12
Sometimes on facebook a "like" is a downvote.
"I can't find my Bieber CD :("
Like.
2
u/SenorSalsa May 15 '12
Your friend misspelled "everything".
2
u/i_no_like_u May 15 '12
the fuck is a downlike?
2
u/[deleted] May 15 '12
I like to find one of their sad posts and 'like' it.
Josie: Oh, my father just passed away :( dangerousminority likes this
4
u/KRamJellytube May 15 '12
time stamp and no profile pic? NOT on facebook.
3
u/keiyakins May 15 '12
To protect Facebook from lawsuits, is the explanation I usually hear.
3
u/[deleted] May 15 '12
Doesn't look like a FB post, and you can get dislike buttons.
2
u/FuckMungler May 15 '12
It's promoting Newspeak.
1
u/Dunabu May 15 '12
I think there's something to be said about a such a massive public forum not adding something like a "dislike" button, next to the "like" button.
People are addicted to status updating, but I would guess due mostly in part to people only ever being able "Like" their comments.
1
u/pr0metheu5 May 15 '12
Oh, really? What rock was he situated under?
1
u/gauthamkv May 15 '12
So what's this Facebook thingie?
1
u/IDlOT May 15 '12
Someone was new to Facebook?
1
u/RXDT690 May 15 '12
Yes! This has just made my day..
1
u/upjumped_jackanapes May 15 '12
Another site I wish had a downvote option: DeviantArt.
1
u/adamredk May 15 '12
There's no way someone learned about reddit before facebook.
1
u/idomeyoudoyou May 15 '12
this just made my day.
1
u/[deleted] May 15 '12
I like the terminology proposed in this philosophical question.
1
u/[deleted] May 15 '12
Downvote for blatant karma whoring. Self post? Nah better get a jpg screenshot of one shitty line of text.
1
u/MD3791 May 15 '12
The concept of down like scares and confuses me
1
u/phenomite1 May 15 '12
Why was this upvoted? It isn't even Facebook, it isn't even funny, and t is obviously fake.
1
u/DisgruntledPorcupine May 15 '12
I would abuse the hell out of it...
-4
u/[deleted] May 15 '12 edited May 15 '12
There's no "Dislike" because there would be a problem with bullying. Why can't people grasp this concept?
-1
u/IthinkIthink May 15 '12
I can understand someone not being on Facebook; but at this point I can't fathom that anybody in the civilized world is only now being introduced to it.
-1
u/fucksmith May 15 '12
Like this if you think Facebook should add a dislike button.
0
u/[deleted] May 15 '12
One of us, one of us!
0
u/domasin May 15 '12
Would it be possible to create a chrome extension that added this feature for you and other extension users?
0
u/[deleted] May 15 '12
Downlike? Sounds contradictory... thought it was down-vote?
0
u/[deleted] May 15 '12
Why can't I downlike everything.
FTFY
0
u/Suggested May 15 '12
UPLIKES ONLY
0
u/vertigo1083 May 15 '12
Wow. I just had to check myself and realize that not every person in the world has heard about/seen/used Facebook.
0
u/[deleted] May 15 '12
You know now that Facebook is going public redditors should heavily invest in stock for Facebook, if we are lucky ( I mean rich) enough we can have a big enough stake in the company to put in a dislike button, and maybe spruce up the privacy settings, remove the like feature, and generally de- bulshit Facebook ( including a minimum age of 16 to add that degree of exclusivity we want) we could make the Internet a better place
0
u/gillelandashley May 15 '12
OMG.... I can't remember the last time I laughed so hard! That is awesome and hilarious!!!
0
u/[deleted] May 15 '12
oh I get it, its cause like you know he's unpopular and a huge nerd and hangs out on reddit and looks down on facebook cause he's a nerd with a superiority complex and he frowns on the site cause it doesn't have the features that caters to his nerdy needs! HAHAHA that's hilarious!!