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Where's The 'Why' Button? Readers React To Facebook 'Reactions'

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At the dawn of Facebook as a social network, if a user wanted to react to a friend's post, there were few options: write a comment, send a message or actually call the friend over and, well, comment. Then came the famous "Like" button and "likes" became part of the digital culture the world over.

This week, Facebook introduced six new siblings for "Like," in an emoji format: "Love," "Haha," "Yay," "Wow," "Sad" and "Angry." For now, they won't be available outside of Ireland and Spain, where the company will study their use. But in case Facebook is listening, here are a few of the instant reactions we saw to those new "Reactions" from NPR's readers in the comment section:

"We need a dislike button, not a bunch of nonsense emotion buttons." -Helix

"I think they need emojis for irony and sarcasm added to the ones shown." -Vern Wells

"There needs to be a Meh! 8¤] ... to convey, yeah read it... so...what." -Listener RayDeo

"These are all sympathetic emotions. Where's the button I can push to tell my friend he's being an idiot without having to take the time for a comment?" -Tukaro

"What about 'Huh?' as a reaction. Pretty sure I'd use it more than Yay." -camelotcrusade

And here are a couple from Twitter:

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Alina Selyukh is a business correspondent at NPR, where she follows the path of the retail and tech industries, tracking how America's biggest companies are influencing the way we spend our time, money, and energy.