Facebook 'Likes' Hack Lets You Stalk Your Crush's Feed In Sneakiest Way

We're all guilty of Facebook stalking from time to time.

And by time to time, I mean it's the only reason any of us use Facebook anymore.

But as we know, stalking can come with a bit of a price.

Say you're stalking your new crush. You've got his Facebook page perpetually open in a tab on Chrome, and you're hitting "Refresh" every five minutes so you can like every single one of his status updates.

But now you're starting to worry you're coming on a little too strong, especially when it's not even definite that he actually knows who you are.

Thanks to Facebook's new update, you'll be able to stalk your crush worry-free.

Last year, we were introduced to the new Facebook reactions, which include Like, Love, Haha, Wow, Sad and Angry. Since then, the company has been sneakily planning to use that data to influence what we'll see on our news feeds.

According to Mashable, a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement,

Over the past year we've found that if people leave a Reaction on a post, it is an even stronger signal that they'd want to see that type of post than if they left a Like on the post. So we are updating News Feed to weigh reactions a little more than Likes when taking into account how relevant the story is to each person.

Meaning, if you happened to go a little overboard in reacting to your crush's pictures and status updates (not just "Liking" them) in the past few weeks, you're going to start seeing his stuff all the time now on your feed.

All the while, you can just sit back and quietly relish his super hot selfies. Give it a "Love!"

While all Facebook reactions are currently weighted the same in terms of how the news feed algorithm is influenced by your activity, the new update plans to change that. It'll consider posts you react to as more engaging than ones you merely "like."

The update also raises the question of how the data will affect things like advertising. Some people are afraid it will only further compromise their sense of privacy on social media.

The only real solution to not having your every move tracked on Facebook is to scroll through your news feed and refrain from "liking" or reacting to any posts at all (which, honestly, I do on a regular basis because I am a sneaky, judge-y, little jerk).

Although, some genius actually took the time to create a Chrome extension that randomly selects one of the Facebook reactions for you each time you "like" something, thus confounding any data collected on your activity.

But I would imagine that kind of defeats the whole purpose of reacting to Facebook posts at all, right? Plus, what if you accidentally "love" a picture of your ex with his new girlfriend? Thanks, but no thanks.

Regardless of how you feel about the new update, it certainly serves as a good reminder that social media is inherently pretty creepy, and there's virtually no such thing as privacy.

Citations: You might want to rethink what you're 'liking' on Facebook now (Mashable)