If Facebook had a Yawn Button
At the moment Facebook has 3 ways you can interact with posts: Like, Comment and Share. All three of these do slightly different things but they all contribute towards a post’s popularity score, which determines how likely it is to appear in people’s news streams. It makes a lot of sense for users to be shown content that people like or interact with (comments could be negative) rather than content people are indifferent to. In short, it’s a system designed to reward and promote interesting content.
Facebook is cleverer than this. It records which other users you interact with most and gives their future posts priority in your stream so you see more from those people you have historically found interesting. Good job Facebook barons!
I think we need the opposite, a way of penalising and demoting the content that we find boring. The way I imagine it working is having a Yawn link with the other options. The main difference with this one is that it would have to be anonymous. We don’t want people to be offended, cause tension or break up friendships. It’s also not intended as a way of judging the quality of other people’s content - what one person finds interesting might be boring to someone else or maybe it’s an in-joke that they just don’t get. It’s about filtering the right content for the right people.