{"id":3638,"date":"2015-09-30T09:03:04","date_gmt":"2015-09-30T13:03:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ncjolt.org\/?p=3638"},"modified":"2020-06-04T20:53:34","modified_gmt":"2020-06-04T20:53:34","slug":"feel-free-to-dislike-this-facebook-to-introduce-an-alternative-to-the-ubiquitous-thumbs-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/blogs\/feel-free-to-dislike-this-facebook-to-introduce-an-alternative-to-the-ubiquitous-thumbs-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Feel Free to Dislike This: Facebook to Introduce an Alternative to the Ubiquitous \u201cThumbs Up\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Facebook users rejoice: CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced in a Q&A on September 15th<\/sup><\/a> that the world\u2019s largest social network<\/a> will soon offer users the option to \u201cdislike\u201d others\u2019 posts.\u00a0 The site already features a \u201clike\u201d button that allows users to affirm content they find pleasing or agreeable. \u00a0Facebook has resisted pressure for years, however, to add a corresponding \u201cdislike\u201d button, despite requests<\/a> from many to do so.\u00a0 Zuckerberg explained the reason for Facebook\u2019s reluctance during the Q&A, citing a desire to avoid the sort of upvoting and downvoting utilized by social media sites like Reddit<\/a>.
\nHowever, what the dislike button does provide\u2014at least in Zuckerberg\u2019s eyes\u2014is \u201cthe ability to express empathy<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whereas Facebook users previously lacked a means of adequately responding to sad or negative posts, they will now be able to acknowledge others\u2019 content with something other than a thumbs up.\u00a0 This may, however, be an overly idealized view of how the dislike button will function in reality.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Although it is hard to critique a move intended to encourage more empathetic interactions, it is na\u00efve of Facebook to ignore the potentially harmful effects of a dislike button.
\nWhile it is likely that many will use the dislike button for the same noble ends<\/a> that Zuckerberg identified, the button\u2019s existence also opens the door for possible cyberbullying attacks.\u00a0 Zuckerberg himself acknowledged the potential for abuse during a previous Q&A session<\/a>, stating, “[s]ome people have asked for a dislike button because they want to say, ‘That thing isn’t good.’\u00a0 And that\u2019s not something that we think is good for the world. \u00a0So we\u2019re not going to build that.”
\nThe prevalence of cyberbullying has steadily increased<\/a> in recent years, and legislators are taking notice.\u00a0\u00a0 All fifty states<\/a> currently have anti-bullying laws on the books, and a growing number\u2014including North Carolina\u2014have expanded their statutes to include cyberbullying as well.\u00a0 North Carolina General Statute \u00a7 14-458.1<\/a>, as part of a larger article covering various computer-related crimes, expressly prohibits cyberbullying and lays out the resulting legal penalties.\u00a0 The recent case of State v. Bishop<\/em><\/a> showed the strength, as well as breadth, of this provision.\u00a0 The court in that case ruled<\/a> that the North Carolina cyberbullying statute was not an overly broad criminalization of free speech in violation of the First Amendment.\u00a0 Notably, the ruling<\/a> also recognized the need to regulate forms of expression outside of speech, citing \u201ca sufficiently important governmental interest in regulating the nonspeech element\u201d significant enough to \u201cjustify incidental limitations on First Amendment freedoms.\u201d
\nThe court\u2019s expansion of the North Carolina cyberbullying statute<\/a> to forms of electronic expression beyond just words opens the door for the sort of lawsuits that might result following the introduction of a Facebook dislike button.\u00a0 It is not too much of a stretch to envision a predatory attack on an emotionally vulnerable victim in the form of a veritable onslaught of \u201cthumbs down\u201d.\u00a0 State v. Bishop<\/em> itself involved cyberbullying via Facebook, and it is easy to imagine the defendant\u2019s derisive comments<\/a> in that case coming on the heels of a barrage of dislikes on the plaintiff\u2019s personal content.
\nIt is extremely doubtful, however, that merely disliking someone\u2019s activities on Facebook could ever be deemed to rise to the level of a \u201ctrue threat\u201d, such as would be exempted from protection under the First Amendment<\/a>.\u00a0 The highly publicized case of Elonis v. U.S.<\/em><\/a>, which dealt specifically with threats disseminated via Facebook, left some question as to the exact criteria for deciding whether a statement constitutes a \u201ctrue threat\u201d, and also failed to discuss whether the court\u2019s holding was applicable to forms of expression other than words.\u00a0 Nevertheless, the fact that tormented \u201cdislikees\u201d may lack a clear form of legal redress does not make the prospect of a button expressly built to convey negativity any less unsettling.\u00a0 To echo the sentiment of many<\/a> in response to the Elonis<\/em> decision, \u201c[i]n a world in which men and women find it nearly impossible to agree on what\u2019s an idle threat and what\u2019s a legitimate one\u201d it is difficult, but inarguably vital, to make a clear determination as to where exactly that line lies.\u00a0 In the meantime, however, Facebook should step back and consider whether introducing a dislike button is truly in their users\u2019 best interests.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Facebook users rejoice: CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced in a Q&A on September 15th that the world\u2019s largest social network will soon offer users the option to \u201cdislike\u201d others\u2019 posts.\u00a0 The site already features a \u201clike\u201d button that allows users to affirm content they find pleasing or agreeable. \u00a0Facebook has resisted pressure for years, however, to …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3639,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[51],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3638"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3638"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3638\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7297,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3638\/revisions\/7297"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}