To be clear: there is no Facebook Dislike button—for now at least.
It's a saucy thing to talk about, as evidenced by the opportunists that have been taking advantage of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's ambiguous language surrounding the topic.
A dislike button would fundamentally change the social network, so Facebook wouldn't launch such a tool without delivering the news itself. Early last week, Zuckerberg confirmed during a Q&A live stream that Facebook's engineers have been working on a dislike button.
"It's important to give people more options than just 'like' to better express sympathy and empathy," said Zuckerberg. "Not every moment is a good moment."
Those remarks, and a heap of media hype, left hackers scrambling for their phishing poles and, of course, unwitting users have been biting the bait. The fact-loving folks at Snopes issued an advisory of some sort warning users not to buy the line pitched by scammers.
Shortly after Zuckerberg's latest remarks on a dislike button, scammers dressed up phishing attempts in a blue and white layout that mimics Facebook's design scheme. Many of the phishing attempts claimed that the dislike button was by invitation only, rationalizing their request to have users fill out "surveys" that were designed to get people to hand over personal details.
Facebook users "who clicked through to activate the Dislike button were greeted with a page that mimicked the style of Facebook-based content but was hosted outside that social network (alongside an initial red flag, what appeared to be a ticking deadline clock and apparent limited time to act upon the offer)," stated Snopes.
Zuckerberg and company have been hesitant to install a dislike button on Facebook, but they seem to understand just how intensely the social network's users want such a feature.
Facebook has pushed for civil interaction on the network, but a dislike tool, negative by nature, opens up a new lane for abusive interactions.
"What they really want is an ability to express empathy," Zuckerberg said. "If you're expressing something sad ... it may not feel comfortable to 'like' that post, but your friends and people want to be able to express that they understand."
