All We Wanted Was a Dislike Button

All the new reactions have a face apart from love, which is instead denoted by a heart.

“We understand that this is a big change, and want to be thoughtful about rolling this out”, Krug said. Reactions are triggered by pressing and holding the Like button on a post, which will reveal new emoticons such as Wow, Love, Laugh, Sad and Angry for you to react to posts.

Not many people are seeing this feature.

The Reactions are extensions of Facebook’s Like button, to give users more ways to share their reactions to a post in a quick and easy way.

Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said in September the company was thinking of adding a “dislike” button, which spearheaded a debate over whether it would increase cyber bullying and negativity on the site.

What the Reactions will look like on your News Feed.

Now, it seems like Facebook has finally heard the appeal of the users as the company today announced the launch of a new feature called Reactions, which will now enable users to express what they feel about the post through emojis. When you scroll over it with your mouse on a computer you have the option to not only like, but love, laugh, say “wow”, or show emotion for sadness and anger.

The Reactions were first road-tested by users in Spain and Ireland.

“We have been testing Reactions in a few markets since a year ago, and have received positive feedback so far”, Facebook’s Product Manager Sammi Krug, said. “Like? Sad? Love? Is “love” limited to loving the post, or can it also mean loving the person posting?”

Facebook says that, initially, “Reactions” will have the same impact on ad delivery as “Likes”, inferring that a user wants to see more of that type of content. With time, the company hopes to learn to differentiate between “Angry” and “Wow”. People wanted to express empathy and make it comfortable to share a wider range of emotions.