Facebook Working on a "Sympathize" Button
The Telegraph reports that Facebook is currently evaluating a "Sympathetic" button as an alternative to the current "Like" button. If approved, users could instead hit the more appropriate "Sympathetic" button when a friend or family member updates Facebook with a negative post.
The "Sympathize" button is the byproduct of a recent Facebook "hackathon" event, where Facebook engineers gather together and brainstorm new ideas for the popular social network. Past events such as this have produced several popular features including the "Like" button, Facebook Chat and the timeline.
"Some of our best ideas come from hackathons, and the many ideas that don't get pursued often help us think differently about how we can improve our service," a Facebook rep told The Telegraph, adding that hackathons are "the foundation for great innovation and thinking about how we can better serve people around the world."
Dan Muriello, a software engineer at Facebook, told The Telegraph that the feature will not work for every post. To activate the button, Facebook users must update their status with a specific emotion like "sad" or "depressed." The end result would be that friends and family will now sympathize with the Facebook user rather than liking the comment.
"It would be, 'five people sympathize with this,' instead of 'five people 'like' this,'" said Muriello. "Which of course a lot of people were -- and still are -- very excited about. But we made a decision that it was not exactly the right time to launch that product. Yet."
So far, there's no set date for when the new button will arrive -- there's a possibility that it may never hit Facebook. These hackathons allow the site's engineers to explore out-of-the-box ideas, many of which never make it to the site.

Ahhh welcome to the PC era where you cannot dislike as that's negativity and the young ones precious fragile minds might not be able to handle it and will go crazy.
It's a new world. In some schools, kids can't play tag anymore as its too violent while in other states, you now have to be 21 to buy cigarettes as I guess 18 is still not truly an adult. You can go to war and die for your country, but you cannot make a choice to smoke or not. Oh and you still can't play tag at 18 as it's to violent.
“I fear the day technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots.”
― Albert Einstein
There are tons of people that post "good morning Facebook" that needs to be disliked into oblivion!
By today's standards for being a "tech company" it looks like Home Depot qualifies since it has a phone app and you can shop online. I mean, you can LOOK at light bulbs, ON YOUR PHONE! How innovative is that? Maybe it only counts as a "tech company" if it lives on VC cash and hires 20-something tech hipsters?
The reason why thumbs down work in other setting i.e. Tomshardware, Reddit, etc. is because these sites are focused more on idea and products instead of facebook where it is focused on the real personal lives of people. A thumbs down on Tomshardware is a disagreement with a user opinion or idea. While a thumbs down on a facebook post has the potential to devalue the person itself.
I am sure some people will hark back to the good old days where childern were forced to toughen up by being bullied and exposed to as much negativity as possible. Which I did face as a child(both bullying and dysfunctional home) and I hope for a better life for the next generation because being exposed to the 'real world' at age of 10 wasn't that great and it didn't make me a better person.
with one exception, I want a dislike button for ads. I get tired of them. I am not interested in mafia wars.