Why you can't dislike something on Facebook
benfrederickson.com
Why you can't dislike something on Facebook
1–10 of 46 posts
Re: Why you can't dislike something on Facebook
#2I don't think this is it. The point of allowing only Likes and not Dislikes seems to me a social thing rather than a usage thing.
Netflix lets you "dislike" something (implicitly using star ratings) because no one sees those ratings except you.
Amazon and Yelp let you dislike things because there is, for the most part, no interactivity around the ratings. A Yelp review or Amazon review generates no flame wars or ill will towards the user base.
So, at least from the examples in this blog post, that leaves Reddit, where downvotes frequently embolden trolls, causes large amounts of moaning about receiving said downvotes, and escalates flamewars as the downvoted have karmic reason to fight more and with increasing aggressiveness.
Disliking things has a negative social impact. It escalates disagreements and makes everyone simply observing the content feel just a bit dirtier for having to witness the ensuing melee.
Sure, it reduces the breadth of possible communication, but people go on Facebook and G+ to feel good and catch up, so a system where things can only be liked and it's hard to hate on something is preferable, even if it is unrealistic.
Re: Why you can't dislike something on Facebook
#3Hi, since I can't leave comments on you nice post, I'm doing it here.
* Thanks for putting up 'long form' posts which I guess what the kids are calling regular articles which take up more than 130 characters.
* Thanks for writing about your work, which I think more people should do.
* For the five star rating, if the mean is not 3 then the distribution can't be normal. It has to be skewed.
* Thanks for making the nice graphs, but please take pity on the color challenged and use much brighter and color blind friendly colors (or simply use gray scale, which would work just fine for your data).
Again, nice work on doing market research and putting up your findings for us to see.
I especially like that you develop a hypothesis at the end of your data description.
Re: Why you can't dislike something on Facebook
#4I think it would be interesting for Facebook to allow the user to set/select additional interaction verb-names. So you could have "dislike" button if the poster wanted it there.
My local newspaper often has stories that say "small child dies in horrific house fire" [like this on facebook], which seems.... inappropriate.
Re: Why you can't dislike something on Facebook
#5A score is punishment or reward by consensus. I always thought the reason was psychological. There's a (very difficult to subdue) urge for a lot of people to punish those they disagree with; individual merits of the argument be damned.
I've seen it here, and it can't be discounted as just a downvote for tone. I think the wisdom of not being able to downvote someone who has replied to you really shines here (along with Slashdot's more extreme example of killing any mod points on a thread you're participating). It sort of forces you to be more objective before dishing out punishment.
The positive distribution may be skewed due to self-censorship to some degree. People tend to look at their score if it's displayed (one of the reasons, I wish "karma" was not shown and instead showed a Slashdot style label score for community standing). There may genuinely be more likable things than unlikable things since scoring of some sort with a very specific number is involved.
I'm more inclined to believe the negative review assessment. It is true that most folks just browse away to something more uplifting if the conversation or the story itself has become toxic.
Re: Why you can't dislike something on Facebook
#6I must be a very strange/negative person, as I tend to downvote much more often than I upvote, be it on SE[0] or HN.
I also killfile people much more quickly than others, or so I was told. Maybe I’m just angry and hate everyone =)
[0] Not really using it anymore, though.
Re: Why you can't dislike something on Facebook
#7I think it would be interesting for Facebook to allow the user to set/select additional interaction verb-names. So you could have "dislike" button if the poster wanted it there. My local newspaper often has stories that say "small child dies in horrific house fire" [like this on facebook], which seems.... inappropriate.
The lack of an option for the author to change the verb really does suck. People wanting to show empathy to someone's post on facebook about something shitty which has happened ends up in a long thread of sad faces, which kind of shit up any real conversation which takes place.
Being able to make a thumbs down available for select posts would solve that.
Re: Why you can't dislike something on Facebook
#8You can't dislike something on Facebook because users will feel discouraged. The whole point of Facebook is to share content with people you know and have content shared with you. By participating in the "negative" this goes counter to that idea.
Facebook is an identity/friend/family driven network, you wouldn't like seeing that John and Mary disliked your marriage. This works perfect in an HN/Reddit environment since you can dissociate yourself and provide pseudonymity.
As for Facebook Pages, maybe there is potential here. Though again unless you are a big brand, I don't know with certainty whether a post with 10 dislikes and faces attached to them is better than no likes at all.
The OP has an interesting way to look at it, though, I'm pretty sure this has been explained more than once by Facebook Engineers.
Re: Why you can't dislike something on Facebook
#9This is not the reason. "Like" and "+1" are endorsements, which draw advertisers and marketers to these platforms. The reason they exist is not to be social, but to use you, the user, to market other content. Celebrities are compensated handsomely for their endorsements, the rest of the population is tricked into doing it for free.
Not only do marketers not want a negative endorsement, they're likely to avoid platforms that present the opportunity. Why not go to the platform that only has good things to say about you? For these business objectives, negative signals offer nothing.
It's not a coincidence that "sponsored stories" involve the same mechanism. They display an ad and include people from your network who endorse the advertiser (as in, who has previously clicked their Like button).
Related to this, it's legally grey whether or not you can endorse something online without disclosing a positive benefit. The FTC have been cracking down on bloggers, and have been asking questions regarding tweets and facebook likes. Companies are trying to get these endorsements using contests and rewards, but those endorsements don't include the disclosure that you normally see required of bloggers reviewing products. The FTC has suggested that this is misleading consumers, because if an individual sees their friends "Like" something, they are more likely to purchase it. What they don't know is that the "Like" was bought, and isn't a true reflection of their opinion.
Re: Why you can't dislike something on Facebook
#10Consider the burgeoning community of Redditors.
Up-vote AND down-vote are integral to Reddit's success.
The article's hypothesis needs MUCH more work/research.