There’s A Huge Problem With Facebook’s New Dislike Feature

Facebook Newsroom

Facebook’s rolled out it’s newest feature ‘reaction buttons’ but they don’t work how you’d expect.

The site’s added five new buttons which have replaced the like count and allow people to say how they feel about a post, users can choose between ‘love’, ‘haha’, ‘sad’ or ‘angry’ the Independent reports.

While you’d expect a ‘sad or angry’ reaction would mean that the site would show you less of that user’s content you may be surprised to learn that the opposite will happen.

Facebook

The issue is that Facebook plans on treating each of those buttons the same, when it comes to showing users ads and posts in their news feed.

This means that by clicking to say you are angry or sad about a post still counts as engaging with it, and this means it actually has more chance of it showing up again, as posts with higher engagement are privileged by Facebook’s algorithm.

PA

The site claims that it will look to fine-tune the ways that reacting to posts works within user’s news feed at some point in the future but for now it may as well be a ‘like’.

Users aren’t the only  ones annoyed as this means advertisers won’t be able to target their ads according to how people have used the Reactions. Marketers have expressed annoyance that they wouldn’t be able to target Hillary Clinton ads to people who have reacted angrily to Donald Trump posts, for instance, though that might come in the future.

Of course you can’t launch a new feature without the internet relentlessly taking the piss so here’s a selection of the best reaction buttons that people think Facebook should have included.

Personally I’d have just preferred a dislike button…

Tom Percival

More of a concept than a journalist, Tom Percival was forged in the bowels of Salford University from which he emerged grasping a Masters in journalism.

Since then his rise has been described by himself as ‘meteoric’ rising to the esteemed rank of Social Editor at UNILAD as well as working at the BBC, Manchester Evening News, and ITV.

He credits his success to three core techniques, name repetition, personality mirroring, and never breaking off a handshake.