A Facebook 'dislike' button is in the works

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed that the company is hard at work on a "dislike" button. Users have long been able to like posts that they feel positively about, but haven't had a one-click avenue to express their distaste.

Zuckerberg stated during a Q&A session that "people have asked about the 'dislike' button for many years, and probably hundreds of people have asked about this, and today is a special day because today is the day that I actually get to say we are working on it, and are very close to shipping a test of it."

The social media company, which has been hard at work on ambitious ventures such as getting into drones and virtual reality with the Oculus Rift, has struggled back and forth with whether to actually introduce the "dislike" button to the masses for obvious reasons. Namely, Zuckerberg stated in the Q&A that "we don't want to turn Facebook into a forum where people are voting up or down on people's posts."

He also took a moment to defend Facebook's current feedback structure, saying that introducing an upvote/downvote dynamic to users "doesn't seem like the kind of community that we want to create: You don't want to go through the process of sharing some moment that was important to you in your day and have someone 'downvote' it."

Basically, Facebook doesn't want you to troll people with the new "dislike" button, but to rather use it to "express empathy," as Zuckerberg stated. I feel like I know how this will pan out already.

• Back when Facebook said we'd never, ever get a dislike button

Via CNBC