Facebook looks to be testing comment downvotes

Hating on dumb Facebook comments may be on the verge of getting a whole lot easier.

Ever the innovator, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg appears to have found a way to transfer all the bickering in your feed into something much more orderly. Specifically, downvotes.

On Thursday, various people took to Twitter to voice their surprise at a new feature spotted on the sprawling social media platform. One that, with just a click, allows you to downvote comments you don't like.

This has long been a feature on sites like Reddit, but Zuckerberg has always been adamant about refusing to add a "dislike" button to his service.

And yet, according to a thread on Reddit spotted by The Daily Beast reporter Taylor Lorenz, a version of that button has made its way into some users' accounts.

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Facebook, when reached for comment, was quick to insist that this move does not presage the coming of a "dislike" button.

“We are not testing a dislike button," a spokesperson told Mashable. "We are exploring a feature for people to give us feedback about comments on public page posts. This is running for a small set of people in the U.S. only.”

Meanwhile, the co-founder of Reddit — which employs upvoting and downvoting — chimed in.

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It's important to remember that Facebook often tests out new products on subsets of its users, and doesn't always make them available to everyone. In this case, the company confirmed that only 5 percent of U.S. Android users are being presented with the downvote option.

Still, the fact that Facebook is testing this shows that Zuckerberg is willing to try a little structured negativity on his site. And why not? After all, Facebook already has plenty of the unstructured variety.

This story has been updated to include comments from Facebook.