After several tests on the feature inspired by Reddit’s ‘Up-voting’ and ‘Down-voting’ system in 2018, recently, Matt Navarra, social media app researcher reported that Facebook is bringing back the feature on its platform. This time again, it is going to be tested first, and in a small number of groups, to see how people react to it.
The main idea is that if you are the admin of a group and you receive a lot of comments on your posts, users can bring up the most liked or most relevant comment on the post so that no one misses it and everyone reads it. Now, as a part of this new test, Facebook is using an interconnected arrow icon underneath comments, where Like and React options are already present. A prompt is also shown to people that they can use this icon to give feedback to any comment if it can be valuable to the group. Now, using this icon, users can Upvote for a comment if they want to make it popular, and they can Down-vote a comment if they do not like a comment or if they think that comment is misleading or dangerous in any form. So, to help such negative comments go down and become hidden from general view, this Down-Voting option is quite useful.
On the other hand, the Up-Voting option for comments can optimize communication and engagement amongst like-minded people and can be a source of spreading positivity and optimism.
The voting system will not register anything about which users used it to Up-vote or Down-vote on a comment.
Although the intent and the idea behind the feature is pretty straight-forward and Facebook has been trying to push it too, but the problem is that people may start using this feature to silence other people with whom they do not agree. It means that if there is a post in which people are commenting differently, a certain group of people can misuse this feature to down-vote the opposite group’s comments and to silent them to show their power and monopoly. Human beings are capable of going to any lengths to downgrade others, and this feature may become a tool for this purpose too!
Apart from this worry, this feature seems to be quite promising in terms of allowing maximum engagement chances.
Back in 2018, this feature was being tested in small groups in New Zealand and Australia. But as much as Facebook had tried to push it on the users at the time, its sudden disappearance was quite surprising! However, now that it has resurfaced just around the US Presidential election, it seems to catch more attention this time around.
The main idea is that if you are the admin of a group and you receive a lot of comments on your posts, users can bring up the most liked or most relevant comment on the post so that no one misses it and everyone reads it. Now, as a part of this new test, Facebook is using an interconnected arrow icon underneath comments, where Like and React options are already present. A prompt is also shown to people that they can use this icon to give feedback to any comment if it can be valuable to the group. Now, using this icon, users can Upvote for a comment if they want to make it popular, and they can Down-vote a comment if they do not like a comment or if they think that comment is misleading or dangerous in any form. So, to help such negative comments go down and become hidden from general view, this Down-Voting option is quite useful.
On the other hand, the Up-Voting option for comments can optimize communication and engagement amongst like-minded people and can be a source of spreading positivity and optimism.
The voting system will not register anything about which users used it to Up-vote or Down-vote on a comment.
Although the intent and the idea behind the feature is pretty straight-forward and Facebook has been trying to push it too, but the problem is that people may start using this feature to silence other people with whom they do not agree. It means that if there is a post in which people are commenting differently, a certain group of people can misuse this feature to down-vote the opposite group’s comments and to silent them to show their power and monopoly. Human beings are capable of going to any lengths to downgrade others, and this feature may become a tool for this purpose too!
More screenshots of the ᴺᴱᵂ Facebook comment ⬆️⬇️ voting feature in groups pic.twitter.com/AsKGRNmDir
— Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) November 3, 2020
Apart from this worry, this feature seems to be quite promising in terms of allowing maximum engagement chances.
Back in 2018, this feature was being tested in small groups in New Zealand and Australia. But as much as Facebook had tried to push it on the users at the time, its sudden disappearance was quite surprising! However, now that it has resurfaced just around the US Presidential election, it seems to catch more attention this time around.
