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Facebook tests buttons to express anger, sadness

FACEBOOK has unveiled what it actually meant last month when the world got its knickers in a twist over a “dislike” button.

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While it may not be the much-awaited dislike button, these Reaction emojis still allow people to express their feelings when using the “like” button is not acceptable.

Other than typing “Dislike” as a comment on posts about disasters, deaths or other tragedies that don’t merit a click of the Like button, there’s been no solution.

Facebook is trying something new and if users give it the thumbs-up, the famous “like” button will be expanded.

The new buttons are love, yay, haha, wow, angry and sad. It works by hovering or long-pressing the Like button and selecting the relevant emoji that you want to put in your message. The “reactions” are expected to appear across both mobile and desktop version of the app and on posts in New Feeds, whether from friends, pages or advertisers. Saying: “We have an idea that we’re going to be ready to test soon, and depending on how that does, we’ll roll out it more broadly”.

The company revealed on Thursday it is testing “Reactions”, a set of six emoji that can be chosen when liking a post simply doesn’t feel right.

“You know you can always comment”, Zuckerberg said.

In a post, Chris Cox, Facebook’s chief product officer, said that these new buttons will address the spirit of the request for a “dislike” button, but in a broader way.

If you think about the user experience first, that option could become confusing, with people thinking something was broken instead.

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As Zuckerberg said, not every moment is a good moment, and such events are not something that users can just generally express the proper emotions with a Like button.

Facebook'Like button gets more emotive