In the second public Q&A session held by Facebook, people from all over the world posed questions to CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The topics that Zuckerberg tackled ranged from Facebook features to the impact of the social network on current events.
Similar to the first public Q&A session, Facebook first crowdsourced the questions on the profile of Zuckerberg, asking users to vote on which questions the CEO will answer by liking them.
One of the more prominent issues revolved around the dislike button, a widely requested feature.
When asked if there have been discussions in the office regarding the dislike button's possible implementation, Zuckerberg gave a straightforward answer.
"Some people have asked for a dislike button to be able to say 'that thing isn't good' but we don't think that is something that is good for the world so we're not going to build that," said Zuckerberg. The Facebook CEO, however, added that there has been an internal discussion on adding buttons that would allow users to express sentiments aside from positive ones.
Zuckerberg said that the like button in Facebook is valuable because users can instantly show positive sentiments or emotions. However, users are telling them that the like button is not always appropriate, such as when a loved one of a friend passes away or when somebody is dealing with a challenge.
Zuckerberg thinks that it would be powerful to give users the means to express additional emotions other than what the like button conveys. He believes, however, that Facebook should first determine the correct way to implement such means so that it would not be abused into demeaning other users and their posts.
The issue is noted as a very important one for Facebook, but Zuckerberg said that there are currently no plans of releasing any changes connected to the much-requested dislike button.
Other topics that Zuckerberg discussed during the Q&A session include the transition of Facebook from a time-wasting activity to a more productive medium, the real name policy of the social network that is supposed to foster security, the high number of updates to Facebook's privacy functions, the experiments that Facebook conducts on its users, and the role of social media such as Facebook in social movements such as the incidents in Ferguson, Missouri.
