Starting this morning, Facebook is rolling out its long-threatened new “reactions” feature, an “extension” of the like button that adds five new ways to interact with posts you come across on your news feed. Where once users encountering tragic, shocking, or bone-chilling news items — famine, war, death, Blac Chyna and Rob Kardashian’s relationship — could only “like” those posts, they are now offered a full spectrum of human emotion: “like,” “love,” “haha,” “wow,” “sad,” and “angry.”
The new buttons will start appearing on desktop and mobile starting this morning. If you’re not seeing them yet, you’ll probably have to wait — it will take a while for the change to deploy across Facebook’s millions of users. We’ve demonstrated before how to use them.
The change is a response to the longtime complaint that the “like” button is inadequate to the many things you feel when you encounter your Facebook feed. (Still, no “existential dread” reaction.) But you’ll notice there’s no “dislike” button: According to a Businessweek article from a few weeks ago, it was “rejected on the grounds that it would sow too much negativity.”
