After years of speculation, Facebook is launching a trial of a dislike button – or, at least, an alternative way to express reaction to posts on the social network.

The function was announced by at a Q&A event by CEO Mark Zuckerberg. “Were working on it, and are very close to shipping a test of it,” he said. Details of how this interface will work – what range of emotions people will be able to express, or where it will be available – werent revealed, but Zuckerberg confirmed a limited trial will begin shortly, followed by a wider rollout if it proves successful.

“Over the years of people asking for this, what weve come to understand is that people arent looking for an ability to down-vote other peoples votes,” he said. “What they really want is to be able to express empathy.

“Not every moment is a good moment, and if you are sharing something that is sad, whether its something that in current events that touches you or if a family member passed away, then it might not feel comfortable to like that post, but your friends want to be able to express that they understand and they relate to you. So I think it is important to give people more options than just like to express their feelings on a post.”

During the Q&A, Zuckerberg also discussed the potential for Oculus VR technology to “teleport” users to distant places “like youre actually there”, the recent milestone of 1bn Facebook users in a single day, and even the future of Artificial Intelligence.

On that topic, he concluded: “Its a little dangerous to be too negative about the prospect of something long-term, when all signs point to that – over the next 10, 20, 30 years – were going to unlock all this value and help peoples lives so much by developing this technology.”