Facebook working on long-sought 'dislike' button

SAN FRANSCISCO: Facebook, pressed for years by users to add a "dislike" button, announced Tuesday it was working on the feature and will be testing it soon.

"We've finally heard you," CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg told a public town hall meeting in Facebook´s hometown of Menlo Park, California.

A question submitted online by a user asked the oft-repeated question of why there were no buttons along the lines of "I´m sorry", "interesting" or "dislike" in addition to the classic thumbs-up "like" button, through which users show their support for posts by friends, stars and brands on the social network.

"Probably hundreds of people have asked about this, and today is a special day because today is the day where I actually get to say we are working on it and are very close to shipping a test of it," Zuckerberg said.

"It took us a while to get here... because we don´t want to turn Facebook into a forum where people are voting up or down on people´s posts. That doesn´t seem like the kind of community that we want to create."

He said he understood that it was awkward to click "like" on a post about events such as a death in the family or the current refugee crisis and that there should be a better way for users to "express that they understand and that they relate to you."

"We´ve been working on this for a while, actually. It´s surprisingly complicated to make," Zuckerberg added.

"But we have an idea that we think we´re getting ready to test soon, and depending on how that goes, we´ll roll it out more broadly."