Facebook is always experimenting with its user experience in hopes of making it as engaging as possible, but that approach might have just backfired. The Verge reports that Facebook gave its reaction buttons a Halloween makeover, choosing to replace the “wow” reaction with a ghost, and the “sad” reaction with a crying Frankenstein, among others. This seemed perfectly fine at a glance…until people noticed it was causing some pretty offensive scenarios.
There are the obvious avenues for trolling, like reacting to a horrible crime.
But what’s worse, the Halloween icons are being used retroactively. So if, a few days ago, you clicked “sad” on a post about your cousin’s recent breakup, it now looks like you reacted with a Frankenstein. Unsurprisingly, It’s really not a good look to drop a ghost on a post about someone’s shocking death.
This isn’t the first time Facebook has done themed reactions since introducing the feature earlier this year. Back in May, it added a flower for Mother’s day that denoted “thankful,” but that was a lot less problematic because a) a flower is pretty benign no matter what, and b) it wasn’t replacing an existing icon.
And in the context of some other social media platform faux pas (like Snapchat’s history of racist filters), this doesn’t seem like the worst mistake you could make. Still, it’s an oddly short-sighted move by a company who built an empire on a thumbs-up button, and it’s probably best to stick to old-fashioned likes for the time being — those were left unchanged.
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