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People have mixed emojis over Facebook’s new ‘likes’

Facebook just got a lot more emotional — launching five new “reactions” on Wednesday that give users a better way to express themselves when they are responding to their friends’ posts.

The social media site’s 1.6 billion users now have the chance to convey their feelings with five additional emojis — “love,” “haha,” “wow,” “sad” and “angry”— that have been linked to the “like” button.

But many people had mixed emotions about the emojis, saying they made things more confusing.

“I still don’t know how to respond to posts requesting prayers for sick/dead family members,” griped Brent Maher, a Facebook user from Louisiana. “Like? Sad? Love? Is ‘love’ limited to loving the post, or can it also mean loving the person posting? Interestingly enough, there still isn’t a ‘dislike’ button, as was originally sought by so many.”

Darnell Scott, of Las Vegas, added, “Only Facebook could manage to both overcomplicate and oversimplify things at the same time.”

Some users even took to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s profile page to complain.

Facebook now gives users six “reactions” to choose from: like, love, haha, wow, sad, and angry.Facebook

“I was wondering . . . Is it a good ‘wow’ or a bad ‘wow’?” wrote Mercedes Lois Bull.

“I noticed that this change just causes me to interact less with posts,” noted Ufuk Orhun, in a post that has garnered more than 7,000 likes. “So, if I can’t decide what I feel I move on w/o even liking it. Too many choices is not a good thing sometimes.”

But others took to the new tool like fish to water.

“LOVE how FB listens,” wrote user Ashley Goldman. “I’m going to be ‘loving’ status updates left and right today!!”

Zuckerberg said he chose to revamp the “like” button because he wanted to give users a way to leave feedback that was quick, easy, understandable and gesture-based. “Not every moment you want to share is happy. Sometimes you want to share something sad or frustrating,” he posted on Wednesday afternoon.

AP
Oklahoma resident Brandon Sullivan said, “Great work. A ‘simple’ dislike button could have disrupted the whole flow and perception of so many posts and the larger realm of Facebook. Kudos Mark, this is why Facebook will continue to grow!”

In order to create the new symbols, Facebook designers brought in Dacher Keltner — a social psychology professor at the University of California at Berkeley and consultant on Pixar’s Academy Award-nominated hit “Inside Out” — to help choose which would work best.

After analyzing the most frequently used stickers, emojis and one-word comments of users across the globe, they found that people expressed love, laughter, surprise, sadness and anger more than any other emotions.