The most popular social networking platform with over two billion users Facebook has apparently started rolling out a new feature called “downvote” that will enable users to mark a negative reaction to comments on the platform. However, it does not function as a dislike button that users had long wished for and it cannot be used to downvote a post either.
When a user taps on the downvote button for a particular comment, it gets hidden for the user and a popup also comes up to ask the user, whether the comment was “offensive”, “misleading” or “off-topic”.
The first trial of the “downvote” option was carried out in the US in February this year and it seems that the feature has been rolled out to more users now.
This new tool is available in the comments section of public posts and Facebook has confirmed that it is not like the thumbs-up or thumbs-down option for liking or disliking a comment. It should only be used to mark a comment as offensive, misleading or hate speech.
Meanwhile, the social networking giant is also working to minimize the number of doubtful stories on its platform to prevent rumors and false stories from circulating far and wide across nations through social media.
In an effort to combat fake news from circulating on the platform, Facebook has devised measures to make fake stories less visible to the users without actually removing them from the platform. As per a report by TechCrunch, when a particular news gets verified to be fake by its third-party fact checkers, Facebook will shrink the size of the post so it becomes less visible to users while scrolling the newsfeed.
“We reduce the visual prominence of feed stories that are fact-checked false,” a Facebook spokesperson was quoted as saying.
It is also learned that Facebook is currently using machine learning to strictly check newly published articles on the platform for falsehood and remove them at the earliest to improve the user experience.
