Here's How To Trick Facebook Into Showing More Of Your Faves
28 February 2017, 16:55 | Updated: 8 May 2017, 17:09
Turns out there's more difference between a "like" and a "reaction" than you realised...
Since Facebook added "Reactions" to every post, they've been a big hit on the site. Sharing how you really feel without bothering with a comment has resulted in many a successful post, meme, and Facebook Live. Trust us, we've done them all.
But it turns out there's a bigger difference between "liking" and "reacting than we realised.
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It turns out that Facebook actually weigh the reactions you're using on posts, in order to determine what to put in your News Feed. Mashable reports that a statement from Facebook reveals how it all works.
"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," explains the statement. "So we are updating News Feed to weigh reactions a little more than Likes when taking into account how relevant the story is to each person."
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Apparently all Reactions are currently weighted the same; so for example, using the "Love" or the "Angry" emoji will mean the same thing, but will still be valued over your bog-standard "Like".
But how does this affect me, really?
Glad you asked! We'll break it down:
- "Reacting" to things instead of just "Liking" them will mean those types of things are more likely to appear in your News Feed first.
- So you can deliberately do this to tweak your Feed, to see the things that matter most to you.
- Say, for example, you want to see less baby photos and more posts from the Nihilist Memes page, or TØP... or us?
- By clicking a Reaction button instead of just Liking the post whenever you see one, Facebook will start to present those posts first on your News Feed.
- EASY.
Now go forth and hack Facebook.
