Move over, long-rumored dislike button: We now have more details on how Facebook is thinking about expanding its “likes,” and it looks as if the service is considering allowing users to express a range of emotional responses to posts on the site — through emojis.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg confirmed last month that the social media giant was working on a dislike button-type feature. Zuckerberg, however, said he wasn’t interested in making his site a Reddit-style upvote/downvote bonanza and instead anticipated that Facebook would allow users to “express empathy” via a wider range of emotional responses.
Facebook began testing “Reactions,” the new emotional responses, a few weeks ago in two countries: Ireland and Spain, according to an announcement from Facebook. The two countries were picked, the company said, because users there tend to have relatively few friends in other countries, making them ideal closed test samples.
There are six emotional responses on offer in addition to like: love (represented by a heart), haha, yay, wow, sad and angry. The additional options will pop up when a user goes to “like” a Facebook post, either on mobile (Android and iOS) or desktop. For now, it doesn’t appear that the reaction emojis will appear on other Facebook products, such as Messenger or Instagram, as Techcrunch noted.
As Zuckerberg indicated, it appears that the choices are designed to move users away from a value judgment about whether a post is good or bad and toward an expression of the emotions the post elicits
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