The way I used to look at it the &#x27;Like&#x27; button was intended as a signal of affirmation to a person than to their comment. That is certainly the way my FB &quot;Friends&quot; use it. Often other people don&#x27;t have a perfectly distilled reaction to something, and the button functions more to say &quot;this affected me&quot; than, say, &quot;I like your perspective on the President&#x27;s policy in the Middle East.&quot;<p>The semantics of a button labeled &quot;Like&quot; are certainly a little bit weird. I obviously don&#x27;t like the fact that a friend is diagnosed with cancer. But my friends also don&#x27;t post &quot;I&#x27;ve got cancer.&quot; and leave it at that. People tend to explain their feelings if they share things like that.<p>In any case, I&#x27;m not sure that Reactions are really much of an improvement. If my friend says, &quot;I&#x27;ve got cancer, but my doctor says I can beat it. Thank you for all your support.&quot; I think I&#x27;d find this new feature confusing. Is it a &quot;Like&quot; because she has a positive outlook? Is it a &quot;Sad&quot; because cancer is difficult and stressful? Is it a &quot;Wow&quot; because it&#x27;s unexpected? Or is it even an &quot;Angry&quot; because my deity of choice has shown itself to be capricious or vengeful?<p>Maybe there&#x27;s a positive side to this. Maybe it will, unwittingly, encourage people to attempt to share their feelings and try to process them instead of just clicking a button.