Facebook has decided that the Like button is not expressive enough and are going to add 5 new icons, called “Reactions” that Facebook calls “angry, sad, wow, haha, and love”. Reactions have been tested with users in a number of different countries whilst Facebook observed how they were used, especially during and after events like the terrorist attacks in Paris.
Facebook has come to learn that its users are particularly resistant to any significant changes in the platform, ironically finding it very easy to express their unhappiness with changes that Facebook have made in the past. Adding Reactions could change the “feel” of the site significantly and so Facebook has taken its time in testing user responses.
The Many Meanings of Like
Facebook’s Like button has become a universal way in which people express some type of reaction to a post on Facebook. In many ways, it is extraordinary that a single symbol can come to mean so many different things. Clicking Like on a sad story might mean that you empathize with the person posting. In another context, it may just be an acknowledgement, either with what was said in the post or simply that you have read the contents.
The trouble is of course that none of this subtlety is conveyed and because of that, its true meaning is lost to the person receiving the like, anyone else viewing the post and the total likes and Facebook themselves. In fact, the total number of likes may include other activities like sharing the post with others or commenting on an article about the referenced post.
The Calls for Dislike
Since the Like feature was first activated in 2009, people have discussed whether there should be a “Dislike” button. In 2010 there were addons to Firefox that allowed users to dislike posts on Facebook. The developers explicitly claimed that its principal utility was to express sympathy rather than distaste.
