Angry and sad: Hong Kong vents at CY Leung with Facebook’s freshly released emoticons
Social media giant unveils five new emoticons on the site, and users waste no time letting Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying know exactly how they feel
Hong Kong Internet users are taking full advantage of a new function on Facebook to express how they feel about local government officials.
The social media giant on Friday unveiled a feature on the site that allows users to react to posts with five new emotive icons named “love”, “wow”, “haha”, “sad” and “angry”, alongside the more familiar “like” button.
Local officials faced an unexpected popularity race as Internet users wasted no time in using it to make their feelings known, with Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying’s profile subjected to a wave of anger on Friday.
A photo of Leung attending a spring reception for the Employers’ Federation of Hong Kong was plastered with 30,000 “angry” emoticons in just four hours after it was published. Some 700 people “liked” the post, while 171 gave it a “sad” icon.
A meagre 43 people expressed “love” for the photo.
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The Chief Executive opened his personal Facebook account in October last year, under the name “CY Leung”.