Instagram Tests New Dislike Button for Comments

[Iwavvns]

Including here!

I have a couple "fans" who do nothing but "dislike" or "angry face" just about every post I ever make ... yet they basically never say a single word

It's so weird and a bit creepy honestly

Yes, that is creepy. If you think about it, they think they're harming you but they are actually allowing you to control their actions.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

If everything wasn't about "engagement" and "metrics", none of the sites/Apps would have reactions of any kind (positive or negative)

It's very distorting for the experience and the users

And, they wouldn’t exist as no one would be able to host content for a large number of people for free.

 

[Mac Fly (film)]

I disagree. Your example could be used as a method of suppressing the truth. Suppose I entered a hacking forum and posted "People should value and respect each other and not break into someone else's computer". What do you think is going to be the ratio of dislikes to likes on my comment in that kind of forum? Anyone who has an agenda is going to attempt to suppress the opposing view regardless of its truthfulness.

I do, however, totally agree with your first statement; "Dislike buttons create peer pressure and negative sentiment".. which is why I feel dislike buttons should be avoided altogether.

Visible dislikes can be used this way too. Avoiding them altogether? I could get behind that idea.

 

[Iwavvns]

Visible dislikes can be used this way too. Avoiding them altogether? I could get behind that idea.

Yep, avoid dislikes altogether. In fact, avoid "Likes" too, and for the same reasons - they're nothing more than opinion and can be abused by anyone using "herding" tactics. Mankind survived quite well before Likes and Dislikes came along.

 

[flexwithmarius]

While I agree with your message of "others have different opinions", it's little more complex here, as these "buttons" are used to elevate/suppress content ... which is very reality distorting

Wait, they’re using comment dislike buttons to recommend content? That makes no sense given that comments can be wildly off topic to the actual post.

 

[thefrost]

Zuckerberg is watching you!

 

[Nermal]

Like/dislike buttons are actually the most insufficient communication tool on the web. Pretty much every time the context of whatever is communicated in the article is so complex, you can’t just cramp a persons perspective into a yes/no or good/bad response.

Just as an example, check the news pages and perhaps some catastrophic events or accident on SocialMedia. You are going to find thousands of likes for an event where even maybe human beings lost their lives. That’s absolutely insane.

Indeed. We have MS Teams at work, and someone from my department wrote "I'm not going to be in the office today: my wife's in hospital", to which someone else clicked Like. I asked what in the world was like-worthy about that. "Oh, I don't actually like it, I just meant that I've read it". Would it have hurt to spend a few seconds to type something like "I hope she gets well soon?" or similar?

Star ratings are another annoyance. Something I remember is when I'd bought a movie from Amazon AU. The movie in question was fairly violent, and it had an uncensored version (as screened in the US and here in NZ) and a censored one (UK). The version from AU ended up being the censored version. I wanted to put a comment on the product page so that people were aware of what they were buying, but you can't just do that. "You must give your post a star rating". At least it wasn't TornadoGuard.