March 10, 2016: Several weeks ago, Facebook augmented its traditional “Like” button with additional emoticons capable of displaying a wider emotional range of user reactions. Doing this will allow the company to gather much richer, more highly nuanced data on the emotional state of its billions of users, use this data to tailor their feeds accordingly, and perhaps in the future providing advertisers the opportunity to target people on the basis of their feelings about content they were already exposed to.
Reactions – both pro and con – to Facebook’s new emotion-measuring system have ranged from wild enthusiasm to “meh” and even fear. Here are some of the most insightful observations.
Despite the widespread approval of the new reactions system, reactions are not the top choice of Facebook users. Given the option of sticking with only ‘like’ buttons, adding a ‘dislike’ button or the new reactions, only 29% chose reactions.
— Peter Moore, writing on the site of YouGov.com
The blandness of the old “Like” system was exactly what made it superior to the complexity of the new “Reactions.”
— David Bordelon, writing on the site of the The Daily Texan
If you want to entice people to have more meaningful engagements with each other online, it’s counterproductive to force them to shoehorn their emotions into neat little boxes.
— Joe McGauley, writing on Thrillist.com
The “angry” button looms ominously for businesses already weary of negative feedback on the public platform.
— Patrick Hatch, writing in an article on Afr.com.
It is just another way for people to air their dirty laundry and there is already enough of that on Facebook.”
— Maria Mazzu, quoted in an article on DailyCollegian.com
Angry is a loaded an increasingly politicized word. It’s become a polite (or passive-aggressive) way to suggest your ideological opponents have gone nuts.
— Kyle Smith, writing in The New York Post
If I am Hillary, I would be thrilled to target people who can’t stand Trump right now.
— Jonathan Adams, Maxus America, quoted in an article on Reuters.com
The new buttons on Facebook look like the life cycle of every relationship I’ve ever had
— TheDanger, writing on the site of Tickld.com.
Law enforcement and intelligence agencies also will revel in the new trove of open source intelligence delivered by Facebook’s new feature, which they will be able to mine for sentiment analysis of criminal and terrorism suspects.
— Ali Winston, writing in an article in Reveal News
So far, (Hong Kong Chief Executive) Leung’s profile picture alone has attracted more than 183,000 “angry” faces, compared to more than 5,800 “likes” and 1,230 “sad” faces.
— Allison Jackson, writing in USAToday.com
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