In a live streamed town hall Q&A on Tuesday, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced the company is working on a range of options to let people reply to posts in various ways — beyond merely liking.
Since the "like" button debuted in 2009, Facebook users have been clamoring for its counterpart. Today, Zuckerberg announced that new ways to interact are finally on the way.
"People have asked about the 'dislike' button for many years, and probably hundreds of people have asked about this, and today is a special day because today is the day that I actually get to say we are working on it, and are very close to shipping a test of it," he said. "Not every moment is a good moment if you share something that's sad like a refugee crisis that touches you or a family member passes away, it may not be comfortable to 'like' that post…I do think it's important to give people more options than liking it."
Given the nature of Zuckerberg's comments, this was initially widely interpreted to mean that there will be an actual "dislike" button. However, BuzzFeed News has subsequently learned that what is more likely is that there will be a range of options to express varying types of empathy.
Update
This post was updated with additional information to address the nature of the new options.