Facebook is testing a new feature dubbed as “downvote” that will allow users flag and hide comments they feel inappropriate. The company claims that the new feature will create a way for people to signal out to Facebook about inappropriate, uncivil, or misleading comments.
"We are not testing a ‘dislike’ button. 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 US only," a Facebook spokesperson told Tech Crunch.
With the new "downvote" feature, users will get the option to report back comments as ‘offensive’, ‘misleading’ or ‘off-topic’. The comment(s) will then be hidden from the user. Also, downvote view counts will not be visible to users. As of now, the downvote button is available to a limited set of public pages and not on individuals' accounts, said the report.
"This is a short-term test that doesn’t affect the ranking of the comment, post or page. It’s designed as a way to give feedback to Facebook, not the commenter, and there will be no publicly visible count of how many downvotes a comment gets," Facebook said.
"The test is available for around 5 per cent of Android users in the US with the language set to English. There’s currently no plan to extend the test," claimed a source from Facebook.
