Facebook, I do NOT like Anders Behring Breivik

Anders Behring Breivik

If you search on Facebook for Anders Behring Breivik, the alleged bomber and shooter of the recent terrorist outrages in Oslo, you will find a long list of pages. If you wish to follow any page of that list and post your own comments, you have to click "Like" on them. Really hard to do in this specific case: "I like Anders Behring Breivik" is not exactly the kind of message I wish to share in the web, just to be able to discuss with other people on Facebook about those attacks.

This is the major weakness of Facebook, in my opinion: using "Like" to join a page, whatever is the content or subject of that page. Should I say "I like Nazism" to join a page related to debate about the political doctrine of the National Socialist Party of Germany led by Adolf Hitler? Should I say "I like pedophilia" to access the corresponding page on Facebook and tell people why I think that psychiatric disorder of adults or late adolescents is a crime? In many cases I simply wish to access a page to share my opinions on a specific subject, independently by my agreement or disagreement on that argument, fact, or individual.

Facebook’s Like symbol

So what? Well, probably we have to propose a different approach, because that social network cannot be considered anymore simple as a place to share gossip and intriguing news about friends, acquaintance, and personalities. Nowadays Facebook is used to share comments, opinions, and multimedia content about any possible subjects, even serious matters and news.

So, the first change to apply would concern the distinction between wanting to access a page and wanting to give your opinion on that same page. Access could be obtained by pressing a button labeled "Join", for example, which would allow to follow that specific page and post your own comments or reply to else’s comments.

The second change would concern the opinion itself, which might be positive or negative. So, in addition to "Like" it should be useful to have "Dislike" too. It makes no sense to allow only positive judgements.

There is also a third aspect to consider. Sometimes I might be grateful that someone has uploaded a specific content, but at the same time I am also very critical with regard to the content itself. This is not related to the whole page, of course, but to a specific post that someone added to my or someone else’s wall. In such a case, what should I do? What should "Like" mean?

In such a case, in my opinion, we should substitute the current "Like" button with a "Thank" one, and use "Like" and "Dislike" to express an opinion about the content, not the fact that it was posted.

Like symbol

Dislike symbol

Thank symbol

Join symbol

Leave symbol

To summarize, the changes I propose are the followings: use "Like" and "Dislike" only to express a positive or negative opinion with regard to a published content, be it a page, a note, or a post. Use "Join" to access a page, "Leave" to stop following it. Use "Thank" to thank someone for having shared with us some content.