Last month’s ‘Facebook Dislike Button’ scam caused some disturbance for those seeking to voice a wider spectrum of opinion than simply ‘like’. So this seems like a good time to look at whether an official ‘dislike’ button is ever likely to happen.

But let’s first look at what’s already out there. Firstly, last month’s scam was only a partial scam. Whilst the scammers did post spam messages, and dupe users into completing an online survey, it does conclude with users being directed to an existing add-on for Firefox which offers users a dislike button. For Facebook.

“The ‘Dislike’ button came up a lot. In fact even the language of the word like was something we discussed a lot as well. But regarding the ‘Dislike’ button, the main reason is that in the context of the social network, the negativity of that button has a lot of unfortunate consequences.”

“The reason we launched the (Like) button in the first place was that there were a lot of times that people wanted to acknowledge something someone did, but didn’t have anything to say. And a lot of comments were one word like ‘cool’ or ‘wow’ so the ‘Like’ button let people did that with a single click. It wasn’t really just a sentiment of ‘Like’.”

“I have the feeling that if there were to be a ‘Dislike’ button is that you would end up with these really negative social aspects to it,” Taylor says. “If you want to dislike something, you should probably write a comment, because there’s probably a word for what you want to say.”