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Facebook's big conundrum: How to express reactions other than 'like'

Instead of a 'dislike' button, Facebook is launching a set of six emoji to help you react appropriately to less-than-happy news. Facebook is testing love, laughter, excitement, sadness, shock, and anger emoji in Ireland and Spain.

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Facebook is rolling out a set of emoji to add some emotional depth to the "Like" button. Here, screenshots of an iPhone 6 show how someone might react to news of a friend's dog being taken to the vet.

Back in September, Facebook chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company was working on a feature that would allow users to better express sympathy on the site. After all, when a friend shares that their pet died, clicking 鈥渓ike鈥 probably isn鈥檛 the best move.

鈥淧eople have asked about the 鈥榙islike鈥 button for many years,"聽Mr. Zuckerberg said at a town hall meeting. "We are working on it, and are very close to shipping a test of it.鈥

Soon after, the company clarified that it wasn鈥檛 focused on a 鈥渃lick to disagree鈥 button, but rather a way for users to better acknowledge and empathize with events or stories that they thought were important.

This week, Facebook that it鈥檚 testing out 鈥淩eactions,鈥 a set of six emoji that add some emotional depth to the otherwise staid 鈥淟ike鈥 button. You can pair the traditional thumbs-up with a heart, or with a face that鈥檚 laughing, excited, shocked, sad, or angry.

That way if a friend posts a story about, say, the Syrian refugee crisis, and you find it moving and important, you could respond with a shocked or sad face 鈥 avoiding the reductive 鈥渓ike鈥 reaction that implies you might think the displacement of millions of people is neat.

This system avoids a binary thumbs-up/thumbs-down system, Facebook says, which might tempt users to simply 鈥渄islike鈥 content they happen to disagree with in an effort to make it less visible on the social network.

鈥淲e studied which comments and reactions are most commonly and universally expressed across Facebook, then worked to design an experience around them that was elegant and fun,鈥 Facebook Chief Product Officer Chris Cox in a post on Thursday.

The emoji are being tested in Ireland and Spain before being rolled out to users in other countries. Ireland has a mostly self-contained user base, meaning that Irish Facebook users are friends mostly with other Irish users. Spain is a test to see how well the emoji work for non-English speaking users. Depending on how Irish and Spanish users react to the system, Facebook may tweak the emoji before enabling them for all users.

Facebook has been working on, or at least considering, a more nuanced emotional system than the 鈥淟ike鈥 button since at least 2013, when the company for an emoji set. Once the 鈥淩eactions鈥 emoji roll out for all users, you鈥檒l be able to react to less-than-ideal news appropriately, even if you don鈥檛 have time to type out a heartfelt response.

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