Today, Facebook redesigned the Like button, replacing it with six different emoji:
I don’t like things on Facebook. At least, not intentionally. It’s possible, on my phone, that I’ve clicked “Like” on something in the last eighteen months or so.
Why don’t I “like” things people post? Because, like a friend put it, “the like button is literally the least you can do.” If I see something that interests me, I would rather engage with it by leaving a comment or sharing it with my own commentary. A “like” is a drive-by interaction. It’s not meaningful, and adding a few more wrinkles doesn’t make it any more so.
I’m not criticizing anyone who likes things on Facebook. Do what makes you happy, what gets you the most out of your Facebook experience. Likes are, for most people, an essential part of that experience.
I’m merely a curmudgeon in my own way. 🙂
And part of that, on my end, was to write myself a small Facebook hack.
I can use CSS to 1) take away the Like button, 2) take away the new emojis, and 3) add the word “Likes” back to the number of likes.
With Stylish installed in Chrome, I wrote this code:
.UFILikeLink { display: none !important; }
._3t54 { display: none !important; }
._4arz:after { content: " Likes" !important; }
Boom. Done. Facebook might as well not have changed.
Obviously, this won’t have any effect on my phone, and I’ll have to add the same CSS styling to my browser at home, but, in large part, the Like emojis are, from my perspective, non-existent.
That’s my reaction to Facebook Reactions — I reacted by turning them off altogether. 🙂