Rules of thumb: Will Facebook's new dislike button accelerate online hate?

We’ve spent years agonising about how to handle cyberbullying and now Facebook are to introduce a new button that could accelerate online hate or see a flowering of empathy, says Ed Power

In what surely ranks as the most significant social media development since the Kardashians figured out how to share selfies on Twitter, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has announced the platform may shortly be equipped with an alternative to the ‘like’ button.

Such an innovation has the potential to forever change how we interact with Facebook. No longer will we be required to bite our knuckles as an acquaintance stuffs our timeline with yet more pictures of their allegedly adorable children (note to parents: your children are adorable only to you). We will at last have an appropriate response to unsolicited holiday snaps and smug honeymoon updates. Behold — an outlet for our Facebook rage that doesn’t involve literally chucking things out the window.