Thoughts Of The Importance Of Facebook Emotional Reactions In Light Of The Latest #WhyIDidntReport Movement
This note was originally written soon after Facebook released an update (bug?) showing only a summarized version of a post’s emotional reactions on October 2018. This was rolled back soon after. and while I considered not publishing it, I decided to publish it anyway as it was an interesting attempt in this specific timing and just couldn’t get out of my head.
A few days ago, on October 2nd, I logged in to Facebook on my laptop, looking for a specific post by one of my favorite podcasts. I immediately noticed something has changed on my feed. Instead of the usual emotional reactions a new summary has appeared.
I quickly scrolled through my feed, baffled. Looking for a post with unsummarized reactions, trying to figure out what’s going on. My whole feed had this new update. The icons were gone, the detailed distribution of the emotions just vanished. There was no way to know how people reacted to a post, just the number of people who did.
I then looked for one of my own recent posts (the one with 213 reactions I took the image from) — surprise turned to annoyance and anger. I couldn’t see the different reactions to that one as well. It was MY OWN POST, one that was gaining popularity, and I was in the dark.
That just didn’t make sense. Why would a platform enable people to choose their reaction type without reflecting it anywhere and block it from view, especially from the post creator? How am I supposed to tell how a post I created made people feel? 200 happy reactions are not the same as 200 angry ones. Was my post funny or insulting? It felt as if Facebook was taking us back to the days where we had only one reaction — like — but doing a half-job with it.
This is not just annoying and confusing. This is not just an engagement killer (what’s the point in reacting to something if no one sees your reaction?). This is endangering all we accomplished in an incredibly short amount of time. All of the support we’ve shown to sexual victims, the anger of what they’ve gone through, the sadness, the love we’ve showed them, are now being placed with a word. One neutral word. Reactions.
Roll that back please Facebook. This is the time to show love, empathy and support. Not to save some pixel space.
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These are the days of the #WhyIDidntReport movement and it is shaking us to our core, the incredibly powerful reaction to Trump’s comments regarding sexual assault. A year after the #MeToo movement, again we find an incredible amount of courageous people sharing their stories over social media. Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are filled with thousands of stories, and getting an outstanding amount of support - embraced by friends, loved ones and strangers alike.
These two movements, taking place in social media, are changing the way we look at victims of sexual assaults. Alyssa Milano described the reach of #MeToo as helping society understand the “magnitude of the problem” and said, “it’s a standing in solidarity to all those who have been hurt”.
#MeToo and #WhyIDidntReport confessions made by people all over the world, and the tremendous support they are getting from society around them, helped victims hold their heads a bit higher, while the attackers are finally being condemned.
I cannot imagine ANY of these two movements succeeding the way they did if we didn’t have Facebook’s emotional reactions, or Twitter’s and Instagram’s ❤ reactions. Imagine posting a confession of how you were abused, and then just seeing a neutral “715 reactions” response instead of the emotional support made with hearts, likes and sadness.
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These are the days where social media is bursting with emotions, and why Facebook’s latest update came at a really bad timing.
Posts about abuse get empathy. Stories of our young ones mischiefs get love and laughter, racism stories are received with anger and sadness.
Scrolling through our Facebook feed, we may not always want to comment or have the right words at that specific moment. In most cases we will respond to a post with emotional reaction.
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As a product manager in a big platform, you know that every change you make, every update you release has a potential to annoy, anger or disappoint some users. You believe what you are doing is for the best interests of your users (hopefully) but your users might not agree with you.
I had some very surprising rollbacks in my past, and some AB tests that followed that enabled me to understand my users better and find another way to do things that delighted them.
As a user, I remember my friends and I complaining over Facebook updates and changes, but we always got used to it so quickly and forgot how things used to be. This is the first time I felt such a strong emotional response toward a Facebook update (or was it a bug?)
