Facebook to roll out six ‘reactions’ instead of dislike button

Reactions will include 'love', 'haha', 'yay', 'wow', 'sad' and 'angry', each of which has a...

Facebook is introducing six new emojis as a way to react to posts alongside the ‘like’ button.

The company will roll out ‘reactions’ instead of a much requested dislike button which will include ‘love’, ‘haha’, ‘yay’, ‘wow’, ‘sad’ and ‘angry’, each of which has a corresponding picture.



The crop of new reactions that Facebook will soon be rolling out to users' newsfeeds PHOTO: Facebook via Independent

Many people wanted a dislike button to react to bad news, but the social media site was concerned that it would be used in negative ways.

The site announced last year that it was testing out the reactions in six different countries. The buttons stay largely unchanged from that early test, with just one of the reactions getting dropped.

According to a spokesperson, the ‘yay’ button, which depicted a little smiley face with rosy cheeks, has been removed because it was “not universally understood”.



The team picked the six reactions by consulting with sociologists, according to Bloomberg. The site also analysed how people tended to react to posts, and attempted to condense those into the emoji-based Reactions.

People will be able to use the ‘reactions’ by clicking and holding on the ‘like’ button, which will still show underneath every post. Doing that will bring up a menu of different reactions, allowing users to select any of them.

After that, each of the reactions will join a tally underneath the post, adding up all of the different reactions.

This article originally appeared on Independent.