Screenshot of Facebook's Reactions feature
After years of Facebook users clamoring for a "dislike" button, the world's largest social network is finally heeding the call —sort of. Facebook
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After years of Facebook users clamoring for a “Dislike” button, the world’s largest social network is finally giving them what they want—sort of. Facebook has begun a very limited test of a new feature called “Reactions” that lets users of its mobile app in Spain and Ireland use emojis to express additional emotions beyond Facebook’s iconic “Like” button (the thumbs-up). These include: “Love,” “Haha,” “Yay,” “Wow,” “Sad,” and “Angry,” and they can only be accessed on the mobile version of Facebook by “long-pressing” or hovering over the good old “Like” button. Facebook says the feature will eventually be expanded to all users, though no timeline has been given for when.

Facebook didn’t just choose these new emotions randomly, of course. As Facebook’s chief product officer Chris Cox explains in a post introducing the new feature:

Cox also posted a video showing off the new feature, which you can see embedded at the bottom of this post.

The fact that Facebook’s new “Reactions,” don’t include an overt “Dislike” button may be disappointing to those who clamored for that specific option, but the move does show an acknowledgment that the monolithic “Like” button is profoundly limiting when it comes to the actual emotions people want to share. Facebook posts about personal disappointments, annoyances, illnesses, tragedies, frustrations, or other challenges in life have never been a good fit for the “Like” button (not to mention your uncle’s crazy political rants).

While this new feature does some to address that obvious fact, the lack of a “Dislike,” or other disapproval mechanism, shows that Facebook doesn’t want to provide tools that make it easier for users to berate one another, at least not any outside of the good old fashioned written comments (which, incidentally, have also supported emoji on Facebook for quite some time).

But, as the saying goes: haters gonna hate.

Today we’re launching a pilot test of Reactions — a more expressive Like button. As you can see, it’s not a “dislike”…

Posted by Chris Cox on Thursday, October 8, 2015