👎 Thumbs Down

The 👎 Thumbs Down emoji belongs to the closed-hand gestures, filed by Unicode under People & Body. In practice it comes up around -1, bad, dislike and down. Unicode also files it under good, hand, no and nope, which shows how widely it is read.

👎 works in messages, comments, captions and profile names. On SmileyZone it is filed under Gestures and Hands. The character has been part of the standard since 2010 (Emoji 0.6). Its code point is U+1F44E. The emoji also comes in 5 skin tone variants, listed in the sidebar.

• 👎 on its own already flags the topic: -1.
• Fits messages about -1, bad, dislike and down.
• Often seen near 👎🏻 Thumbs Down: Light Skin Tone, 👍 Thumbs up and 👍🏻 Thumbs Up: Light Skin Tone.

The lowered thumb is the counterpart to 👍 and reads as rejection almost everywhere. In writing it lands harder than spoken criticism would, because the tone of voice that softens “I’m not keen” is missing. In work contexts it is often received as needlessly blunt.

• 👎👊 – Thumbs Down and Oncoming Fist
• 👎👍 – Thumbs Down with Thumbs up
• 👎✊ – Thumbs Down plus Raised Fist
• 👎🤛 – Thumbs Down and Left-Facing Fist
• 👎🤜 – Thumbs Down with Right-Facing Fist

Easy to mix up with 👎🏻 Thumbs Down: Light Skin Tone, 👍 Thumbs up or 👍🏻 Thumbs Up: Light Skin Tone. They sit in the same Unicode subgroup and look similar at small sizes, so it is worth checking the name before sending.