Facebook “Reactions” more important than “Likes”

Facebook has now admitted it places weight on reactions — those love, sad, angry, lol emojis — when determining what to put in your news feed. It values them more than likes.

“Over the past year we’ve found that if people leave a Reaction on a post, it is an even stronger signal that they’d want to see that type of post than if they left a Like on the post,” a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement to Mashable.

Makes sense. First, because it’s easy to hit Like but you have to work a little bit more to call out the emojis. So two clicks instead of one. Secondly, Like is a kind of tepid reaction, but Love or Angry is expressing an emotion.

“…if someone uses a Reaction, we will infer they want to see more of that type of post.” — Sammi Krug, Product Manager, Facebook

For now, Facebook said it isn’t placing any more emphasis on one reaction versus another… so, being in love or really angry with something won’t make a difference in how it’s looked at… just that there’s a strong emotion attached.

In case you’re wondering, people LOVE things more than anything else when it comes to emojis. About half of all reactions are loving stuff.