Sunday, October 11, 2015

Facebook adds reaction emojis to its "like" button

Jacob McCloskey
Staff Writer

We’ve been waiting for this for years, and finally, Facebook’s “like” button is getting a major emotional update.
  While veteran users have been waiting for it since the site’s inception, but many high schoolers may view it as an update coming five years too late.
  At a meeting on Sept. 15, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company would be rolling out a beta version of a new “dislike” button. While many people had no problem with the announcement, much confusion surrounded its true purpose.
  Some believed that a dislike button could lead to cyberbullying: “There is already enough hate on the internet, and adding a dislike button will only make it worse,” said Atiq Haneef, a website user of the New York Times.
  Some users didn’t know the feature wasn’t already available: “Wasn’t there already a dislike button?” said Students Claire Dougherty and Mackenzie Carpenter.
  Facebook users tend to post about life events, positive or negative. If someone reveals negative news over Facebook, “liking” the post would often be deemed inappropriate.
  On Oct. 8,  Facebook debuted the reactions button, a series of emojis added to the traditional “like” button, expressing several different common reactions to content: angry, sad, wow, yay, haha, love. It is reasonable to assume the reactions exist as a way to convey more information to Facebook and its advertisers.