According to research, this feature allows anonymous users to underestimate comments that they consider " little useful". The more people press the button, the less that comment will be displayed.
However, this feature immediately sparked controversy. Do users really understand the meaning of the downvote button? Will they use it for the right purpose of marking redundant, value-less comments? Or do they take advantage of it to destroy opinions they disagree with?
When asked about this issue, Meta's spokesperson said that, unlike previous studies, this time Facebook will clearly explain to users that this is a tool to evaluate the level of usefulness. A small caption bubble will appear under the button, with the words: "Let us know which comments are not useful".
Currently, this is still just an experiment and is uncertain to be widely deployed.
Facebook's testing of a new feature shows that the social network is looking to regain users' trust by improving the quality of discussions on the platform. In the context of increasingly large amount of garbage content, giving the community additional tools to self-screening meaningless comments is a necessary step.
However, the biggest challenge will be to ensure objectivity in the way users use this tool, avoiding turning it into something to bury conflicting opinions.
