Facebook's new dislike button (upvote and downvote)

So Facebook has a dislike button now – only it's shaped like an arrow. There's one up arrow and one down arrow, and both arrows sit below comments in several areas of Facebook. Much like Reddit, comments are upvoted or downvoted, and rise or fall in large threads as such. Basically Facebook copied Reddit.

I don't think copying Reddit's voting system is a bad move for Facebook. I believe the social network should use any methods necessary to try to keep users inside their walled garden of internal sharing and button-mashing. Anything to distract from the continued public shaming Facebook's been the subject of over the past few weeks.

With this new up- and down-vote system, Facebook hopes to let the public – the Facebook public – do the same job Reddit users do on a daily basis. "Support better comments," said the first public notices of this new system. "Press the up arrow if you think that a comment is helpful or insightful. Your input is anonymous."

"Stop bad comments," said the Facebook feature's notification of the downvote. "Press the down arrow if a comment has bad intentions or is disrespectful. It's still OK to disagree in a respectful way." With the tapping of your finger, on the button, anonymously!

Facebook shared a message this afternoon about the roll-out of this new set of features. "Facebook is a place for free expression, but we also recognize that there should be a way for people tell us and each other which comments are most thoughtful and useful."

"To that end, we're running a test that introduces an upvote and downvote action for comments on large public Page posts," said a Facebook representative. "This feature allows people to push those thoughtful and engaging comments to the top of the discussion thread, and to move down the ones that are simply attacks or filled with profanity."

Of particular importance to the everyday average user is the location of these new buttons. They don't appear on every single post, or every single comment. They're reserved for large public Page posts, specifically – for the time being. They will not (or should not) appear on personal News Feeds or "interactions with friends."

Let us know if you see these upvote and downvote buttons anywhere other than large public Page posts. And be on the lookout for more buttons and changes to Facebook in the coming weeks and months. They wont let millions of users leave their service without a fight!