Hey, Facebook – these are the new Like buttons you should have used Facebook has announced a range of new buttons intended to give its users the ability to express a wider range of emotions – certainly wider than today's "Like." The buttons, labelled with emojis, cover common feelings such as excitement, sadness, anger, and so on and will be made available first to users in Spain and Ireland. …
Well, as to the "fresh air" ones - we hardly need those for El Reg, since the Reg doesn't take over people's lives the way Facebook does. And the other emojis I think are adequately covered by the existing icons - Fail/Facepalm for Idiot and Umm, for example.
That said, we do need a Click Bait icon because this is something El Reg is occasionally guilty of, and as to the Privacy icon - the ability to put certain commentards on ignore could be worthwhile, although I personally think that doing so would reduce the liveliness of some the arguments we have here. So I'm none too sure where I stand on that one.
I have this useful algorithm programmed into my wetware:
<pseudocode>
AUTHOR == 'Worstall' & next_article()
COMMENTARD == 'amanfrommars | *Bryant*' & next_comment()
</pseudocode>
Having said that, my wetware is non-deterministic: I don't want *never to see* the option.
On the subject of El Reg post icons, there are several that I don't even understand: what is the purpose of "Your foster parents are dead", for instance?
"On the subject of El Reg post icons, there are several that I don't even understand: what is the purpose of "Your foster parents are dead", for instance?"
"Your foster parents are dead" is what the T-800 (Arnie) in Terminator 2: Judgement Day says to the young John Connor, when Connor phones his foster parents; Arnie takes the phone off him and listens to Connor's "foster mother" (actually the T-1000, which has just killed her), and identifies its voice.
So that icon relates to the Terminator, and by extension, that aspect of El Reg culture concerned with the Rise of the Machines and robots/cyborgs taking over the world.
the Reg doesn't take over people's lives the way Facebook does
Dunno, for a while there back in 2002-9 (ish) when LP was on top form as a contributor, the Reg did take up a considerable portion of my day*. Defence procurement being one of those things you don't know you're angry about until someone like Lewis comes along, lays it all out for you and goes: "SEE?!"
* Work day, of course.
I don't get how Facebook has a (widely ignored) minimum age requirement of 13 yet proposes these icons that look as if they are designed to appeal directly to a cbeebies audience!
Even more immature than the upvote/downvote buttons on the Register and other discussion pages.
Come on Register! Give us over 12 year olds an option to switch them off at a user level please!
The only people who really care about "likes" or "dislikes" in the comments, are the target audience for Facebitch.
As you say, the correct approach is to not give a shit as to whether some subjective popularity contest is being used by those numpties. Have an upvote!
Remember, this is the same Pavlovian reaction that those two idiots who formed "Peeple" are counting on. Yelp has the same business model.
"Fear my useless opinion because I have the power of a dislike button or a negative review"
To that, I say so what, who frikkin cares. If you want "social", unplug, get out in the real world and SPEAK to some real people. You may learn something life changing.
"Obvious fraud/fake"
"Look, a f***ing sunrise doesn't automatically make it inspirational"
"David Avocado Wolfe level woo"
"Not more bl**dy privacy/conspiracy bulls***"
"Am I supposed to take you seriously with spelling/grammar/capitalisation like that?"
"I tried to report this s*** but Facebook conveniently removed the relevant option, thus avoiding accountability for the borderline criminal content published"
"Meh"
Me, I'm a big fan of the PA suggested ones - especially the eff-your-sprog one - and I don't even have an FB account!
Oh yes, this one.
I'm sure my Facebook activity log contains more links to Snopes than to all other web sites combined.
I'm rapidly getting to the point where if I see one more long-debunked "Muslims want to ban Christmas in <insert town name here>" image I'm going to print it out 50 times and shove it down the poster's throat.
If Islamic immigration to the West is that big a problem at least get your fucking facts straight first. You aren't doing your cause any favours by constantly posting debunked bullshit!
As someone who once ran a forum and put up light-hearted themed polls as a Friday distraction I can say with some certainty that the more options you offer the less worth the mechanism has, and that no matter how many you offer there will be a sizable and vocal claque who will whine that they can't express their response within the narrow confines provided to them.
But if I had to use any of these stupid buttons I'd rather use The Register's. Kudos.
There should be a "petri dish" icon as well.
As in "This post is like a petri dish filled with friendship germs."
Seriously, we need some overtly negative optinos. Idiot is good, clearly. But I think Farcebook misses the bot if they don't include the following:
Dislike
Mistrust
Dubious, at best
Hate
Loathe
Troll
"SafeWord"
Fuck
Marry
Kill
You know, just to keep things on the up and up.
My understanding is that these are in addition to the 'up' and 'down' vote icons, rather than icons attach to their comments. Hence for any given posting I might receive: 2 up votes, 50 down votes 23 facepalms and 71 Linux is the solution to your problem votes...
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