Belgian police warn Facebook users from using 'Reactions' button to protect privacy

Belgian police have asked citizens to shun Facebook’s “Reactions” buttons to protect their privacy, the media reported on Sunday. In February, five new “Reaction” buttons were added next to the “Like” button to allow people to display responses like sad, wow, angry, love and haha. According to alarabiya.net, police said Facebook is able to use the tool to tell when people are likely to be in a good mood – and then decide when is the best time to show them ads. “The icons help not only express your feelings, they also help Facebook assess the effectiveness of the ads on your profile,” a post on Belgian’s official police website read. The feature was launched in response to the demand for a ‘dislike’ button. According to a recent study, the additional “Reaction” buttons have failed to charm users. The study by social media analytics and benchmarking tool for professionals Quintly found that “Reaction” emoticons are underused till date. Quintly filtered 130,000 posts and found that users rarely take the time to give their opinion about a post and prefer to simply “Like” it and scroll on, techtimes.com reported last week. “About 97 percent of interactions consist of likes, comments and shares. This simply shows how little the other reactions are used,” the findings showed. The study indicated that videos obtain up to 40 percent more “Reactions” than images. Users tend to use the “wow” reaction much more when dealing with videos. The “angry” reaction was used twice as much with video content when pitted against image content. IANS