This article was published on September 30, 2011

Facebook doesn’t want you to “dislike” things


Facebook doesn’t want you to “dislike” things

Facebook has perhaps become best known for its “Like” button. You can like news stories, videos, and whatever else your friends decide to post in the newsfeed.

With f8’s announcement of Open Graph (Want to know everything that happened at Facebook’s f8 this year? Here you go.), one of the most exciting things announced was that developers can now make up their own verbs and actions people can take on content. Something like “Watch”, “Listen”, and “Read” will surely be seen on buttons in apps everywhere.

All Facebook points out that the one thing Facebook doesn’t want you to ever do is “dislike” something. Obviously Facebook thinks that if you don’t like something, you shouldn’t take an action on it at all. I tend to disagree. Sometimes, people post things that are sad, or upset you. The announcement of a death, or a sad tragedy makes you want to “dislike” something. It’s the perfect opposite of “like”. Facebook is having no part of it, according to the screenshot below, you can’t use the verb “dislike” in your app.

How open is Open Graph? Not completely open apparently.

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