It would reduce our empathy to a click.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg isn’t
too keen on adding a “Dislike” button to the service, he said in a Q&A
event Thursday. But Zuckerberg did float the idea of a new button for “sad
moments” when pressing “Like” just doesn’t feel right. That’s why Facebook
engineers recently toyed with a
Sympathize button,
a concept well-received by Facebook’s staff as well as the larger public.
But Facebook hasn’t implemented “Sympathize” yet.
It’s still thinking about “the right way” to go about adding such a feature,
Zuckerberg said, leaving users hanging. What’s taking so long?
It could be because implementing another Facebook
button is a terrible idea — particularly to represent an emotion deeper than
“Like.”
But Facebook hasn’t implemented “Sympathize” yet.
It’s still thinking about “the right way” to go about adding such a feature,
Zuckerberg said, leaving users hanging. What’s taking so long?
It could be because implementing another Facebook
button is a terrible idea — particularly to represent an emotion deeper than
“Like.”
Ever since the Like button launched in 2009, the
blue thumbs-up icon has become a symbol recognizable by nearly anyone who’s
used the Internet. But the Like button’s mega-popularity also resulted in
something that wasn’t so stellar: Like Anxiety, which strikes when your posts
aren’t getting as many Likes as you think they deserve. While the Like button
has made it easier to quickly express emotion on Facebook, Like Anxiety
has turned the platform into a popularity contest and insecurity hotbed.
Now try imagining posting about something
emotionally crippling — say, the passing of a loved one — and not getting
enough “Sympathize” clicks. While most of us can get over when a positive
post’s Likes plateau too soon, it would be far harder to move past our sadder
missives getting Sympathy-snubbed. Hitting Sympathize is literally the least
your friends could do for you in your time of need. If they didn’t click, that
would feel pretty awful — you might even start checking which of your friends
hit “Sympathize” and which didn’t bother, which wouldn’t be healthy for your
friendships.
Facebook’s core mission, as Zuckerberg has put it,
is promoting meaningful communications. That goal helps explain why Facebook
Messenger was pushed into its own standalone mobile app and why disabling read
receipts isn’t an option. Both moves are meant to encourage us to respond to
our friends more quickly.
But if Facebook adds a Sympathize button, it would
actually make our conversations less meaningful. How? It would
override the only way to currently express sympathy on Facebook: Writing a
personal comment to a friend, even if it’s only a few words.
The reality, then, is that ‘Sympathize’ is already
on Facebook. So is “Dislike.” And “Love.” And “Thanks” — and any other emotion.
They’re just not buttons. You have to write those emotions out yourself, and
that surely means more than any button ever could.
