In late 2017, Facebook was in the final stages of preparing for a major change in how it ranked posts and comments, and at least one employee had a li

Emoji reactions were a cute addition to Facebook. They became a headache.

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2021-10-28 03:00:10

In late 2017, Facebook was in the final stages of preparing for a major change in how it ranked posts and comments, and at least one employee had a lingering concern: what to do about the emojis.

The plan was to give emoji reactions such as “love” and “angry” five times the weight of a traditional “like” in Facebook’s secret formula, according to an internal company document. That would make content that elicited those reactions far more common in the news feeds of Facebook’s gigantic user base.

“Quick question to play devil’s advocate: will weighting Reactions 5x stronger than Likes lead to News Feed having a higher ratio of controversial than agreeable content?” the employee asked on an internal message board.

“I.e. if I post a story that I bought a coffee (pretty boring example I know) I might invite a few Likes from friends. However, if I post ‘Steve Bannon Punches Hillary’ I’ll probably get more polarized reactions with Angry emojis and thus (5x?) more distribution,” the person wrote.

The response from colleagues: It’s possible, but the company knew about the potential problem and was working hard not to promote “engagement bait.”