Now that MNHQ has given us a support emoji reaction can we have a laugh out loud one as well?

[IwantToRetire]

Not much good news, but was pleased to see that we can now "react" with a of support.

Such an important part of FWR.

But another positive would be able to tell someone they had made us laugh out loud.

So maybe have a react or .... ?

TBF if I received a laugh emoji response on a serious post I’d made my first thought would have been that someone had fat thumbs and had clicked it by mistake!

"So what we're all adults" in response to someone saying it was used to bully is actually implying how others should react. Feel free to talk for yourself clearly going forward.

I miss it. So what if someone laughs at me sarcastically? No skin off my nose.

I’ve spent the last 6 weeks pretty ill, with what turned out to be lung cancer. During this time of a lot of unwanted inactivity and anxious boredom, this board of clever, funny women have given me plenty of belly laughs to keep me sane along the way. If I heart your humour, it’s my laugh.

For the fragile of disposition, I’d like to point out that while my use of the heart emoji may have several meanings, depending on context, it’s never sarcastic!

Some posters were properly upset by the use of 1 emoji, ‘appreciation’ as others have mentioned can be shown by the use of the heart

the removal of it was requested in December 2024 and it took mumsnet 6 months of monitoring before it was removed

maybe other options like having it allowed on certain boards should have been used but they decided not to do that

i don’t post emotional stuff, i have never had a laugh that wasn’t because i had said something funny, but i also don’t get the angst from some posters (not on this thread but there have been others) over its removal

Some of us like laughing together. Some of us find having visible coloured emojis sprinkled across the board makes reading hard or impossible. Remember the dismay a week or so back at the new colour scheme.

A return of our much loved and missed laugh reaction, coupled with a setting that lets those users who dislike them not see them seems the best option. And maybe a 'sensitive topics' area where they are not available.

A return of our much loved and missed laugh reaction, coupled with a setting that lets those users who dislike them not see them seems the best option. And maybe a 'sensitive topics' area where they are not available.

maybe a thread requesting it on site stuff would work…

Agree with this. Positive social interactions shouldn’t be off the table because there are cruel people who will misuse them to hurt others.

I’ve genuinely only used the laugh emoji when someone has written something witty. It was a way of saying “nice one” or “I see what you did there” in appreciation of them brightening up my day. I agree that whole-class punishments are shit.

Because it was being used on posts where women were talking about trauma and abuse.

Coming from 'anonymous user' and/or recognisable trolls.

Sorry who exactly is of fragile disposition? I'm quite aghast at the attitude on here lately. How many women being sarcastically bullied about a baby loss is acceptable and then derided as fragile to people on here so they can get laugh reactions? The reasonings given sound quote insecure tbh that your ego points from a laugh emoji matters so much compared to trolling abuse of women

I'm glad the laughing thing has gone - too many people being dicks about it. MN were asked if if it could be removed from certain threads where there was a real possibility of it causing more hurt but they wouldn't or couldn't, so now it's gone. Hurrah!

Good grief.
Not sure how you leapt to my ego from my desire to thank people who gave me a much needed laugh. But leaping to a pre set conclusion is a defining feature of the kind of poster who wishes to ban ordinary social interactions for all because a few abuse them. This enraged demand to police people’s expression, particularly on the internet is a massive part of the absolute trashing of women’s rights in the last couple of decades.

So, call me what you like, angry stranger, it makes no difference. You don’t get to berate the world into compliance, none of us do.

But you can still thank people who gave you a much needed laugh - what you (and by you I mean posters generally) can't do now is laugh at someone who's experienced the loss of a baby for example without others seeing the emoji and reporting it. Surely you wouldn't want anyone to have the ability to cause distress to another poster by having the ability to post a silent laughing emoji?

That's why I have suggested EITHER having a 'no reactions' section for sensitive topics OR a settings option letting people decline seeing reactions.

Obviously I'd also like to see a lifetime posting ban on anyone who thinks laughing at someone who has lost a baby is appropriate.

I also think that for the rest of us who are not in extremely fragile emotional states, it's important to be able to share laughter.

I agree with your suggestions, but they were amongst a number that were put to MN and they couldn't/wouldn't make the changes - so it's back to previous years and sharing the laughter in with a 😂 I'd much rather that than posters experiencing bullying and distress because of some dickheads who can't behave themselves.

I very much like people laughing together which is one reason why I’m glad that reaction which didn’t work on the app is gone.
if reactions could be made usable by all and visible to all then they'd be ok but honestly we managed fine for years by just mentioning someone’s name in a post with a with it.

It was all too often used to bully and troll people because of the hidden nature of the reactions.

If people are wanting to laugh as a group, surely that would mean visible laughter reaction not a hidden laughter reaction.

Often when it was used to bully others it was a pattern that was unmistakable and over a series of posts. You could see that it was a not accidental one off.

Visible emojis are hard work for some of us, all those coloured blobs 'jumping' and eventually (after 20 minutes or so) rendering the whole site unreadable. That said, I gather some people are plagued with advertisements, so readability is clearly not the MN number one concern.

When a bully or group of bullies was mis-using the old ones, why were they not banned?

Because MN would not be in a position to confidently say it was bullying from what I gather.

As you say Dean, MN is a site with so many distractions on a page with ads, and images and thumbnails, I am not sure that people posting a visible emoji can be considered the straw too far at the moment.

Maybe if people want to share their laughter, they could say something rather than emoji’ing to cut down the emojis? But either way, I would have thought openly sharing the laughter would be more conducive if the goal is to share laughter compared to having a post and only getting reactions that are not visible.

What happened was that posters who intended to bully or mock could do it without others seeing it. It was inevitable that they would use any opportunity they could. So they did. I have not seen posters use the other reactions to bully others in the way that posters used the laugh reactions.

I remember there were instances where women had recounted their trauma on FWR and then posted later in the thread that a poster on the thread had posted laugh reactions to that post. While it is easy enough to turn the reactions off on support boards, how do you monitor that on FWR where women are already too often having to recount their trauma to make their point. We so often have both laughter and trauma on one thread.

Indeed, I have seen a person who shared their experience of trauma get bullied very visibly on FWR within the last couple of weeks, with the result that they have retreated from the site. Which was disgraceful.

It is also true that discussion forums work perfectly well without any kind of 'react' option, public or private.

Yes. And that behaviour was visible to all.

I agree - and it could be reported or challenged by others, which showed support for the poster being bullied and in many cases, the bullying could be removed before they'd seen it. The only way for the hidden laughing emoji to be highlighted was for the poster on the receiving end to report it to MN themselves - insult to injury, imo.

TBH, I'm really not sure what the reactions add to the forum. I mean yes, it is "nice" to be able to Agree with a particularly pertinent post. And it is a "nice" feeling when your post is popular with others. But the discussions flowed perfectly fine before the reactions were introduced (in my opinion). We could just say we liked/disliked somebody's post and then it was fully visible to everybody rather than being secret.

The issue with making the reaction reportable is that the receiver of the reaction has to see that reaction and understand its use before reporting it. So, what is the point of reporting the misuse of it when a poster has already seen it and understood the intention of posting that reaction?