Facebook just revealed a really intriguing secret behind their “like” button options.
The company’s algorithm weighs your “reactions” to posts ― love, haha, wow, sad and angry ― over just regular “likes” to determine what sort of content to put in your News Feed.
In conjunction with the first anniversary of reactions, Facebook has determined over the last year that if someone takes the extra step to select a reaction, it’s “an even stronger signal that they would want to see that type of post than if they left a Like on the post,” a spokesperson told us.
Strangely, all reactions are weighted the same, which means the News Feed prioritizes things you “love” equally to things that make you “angry” or “sad.” And it prioritizes all of those over things you merely “like.”
So, if you wondered why you were constantly seeing that random high school friend’s wedding photos, it’s probably from that time you were scrolling through Facebook after a night out and felt particularly generous with your “love” on their engagement photos.