I think the conclusion here is wrong. There may be fewer negative ratings, but it doesn't necessarily follow that they are less valuable for making recommendations. In fact they may be more valuable. If people go around indiscriminately "liking" random things, but reserve their "dislikes" for things they really hate, then "dislikes" might actually carry more useful information about their preferences than "likes".
Why you can't dislike something on Facebook
21–30 of 46 posts
Re: Why you can't dislike something on Facebook
#22There are some newspaper websites powered by Facebook comments. I wish I could downvote some of the comments I see there. I see some of the most terrible comments get liked a lot and the commenters become star commenters (or whatever FB calls them).
Re: Why you can't dislike something on Facebook
#23I guess this disproves the old "People are more likely to go online and say something bad, than something good."
Re: Why you can't dislike something on Facebook
#24I 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…
> [...]but people go on Facebook and G+ to feel good[...]
Fewer companies will want to advertise with you if their company/product page can be disliked. To name an example Monsanto has ~22k likes (https://www.facebook.com/MonsantoCo) they'd probably have at least two orders of magnitude as many dislikes if people could "dislike".
Re: Why you can't dislike something on Facebook
#25I 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…
Contrary to the reddit example, I think downvotes here on HN work out decently. I've mostly only seen spam, off-topic, rude etc. comments downvoted here.
Re: Why you can't dislike something on Facebook
#26While the data is interesting, my understanding is that pales to: if your posts get Liked, you keep using Facebook, and if your posts get disliked, you stop using Facebook.
Some people think Facebook is a drama creation engine. That's a bit unfair: it's a usage creation engine, which does allow usage by people who are prone to creating drama. (Talk to e.g. teens sometime: for some people, implicit competition within real-life friend groups for who gets the most likes on their photos is A Thing.) Facebook is not unaware of social patterns like this, so they make product choices which make them less likely to negatively affect Facebook's interests.
Re: Why you can't dislike something on Facebook
#27Haha, it's funny because if how accurate it is for me on HN. I see both up and downvote buttons, and it simply slows me down with a risk of pressing the wrong one. I never downvote comments I dislike, I just ignore them and upvote good ones. So I'd prefer to hide my downvote button.
Re: Why you can't dislike something on Facebook
#28I 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…
> [...]but people go on Facebook and G+ to feel good[...] Very true, but to add to that another factor that shouldn't be underestimated is that it's companies advertising on these platforms that are footing the bill for their operations. Fewer companies will want to advertise with you if their company/product page can be disliked. To name an example Monsanto has ~22k likes ( https://www.facebook.com/MonsantoCo ) they…
I'm not sure that's necessarily true. Sites like Amazon, NewEgg, EBay, and anyplace else with a ratings system for products and product sellers seem to do fine, despite the potential for getting negative reviews and ratings. These are sales channels rather than advertising channels, so maybe that makes the difference.
Re: Why you can't dislike something on Facebook
#29I 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…
Yes I think this is definitely a more likely reason. Having "dislikes" on Facebook could also make people feel bad about things they've posted, which would make them less likely to associate negative feelings with the site, likely leading to decreased usage for some people. So it's in FB's direct interest to not have "dislike."
Re: Why you can't dislike something on Facebook
#30>I think the biggest reason is that even if they did offer a dislike button, people just wouldn't use it often enough to justify the precious screen real estate it would take up.
Ha! Let's test that, shall we.