VietNamNet Bridge – While Facebook engineers believe that the sticker feature in the Comments section allows people to express opinions in a fun way, many Vietnamese netizens, with some exceptions, have found the new feature annoying.

Stickers had previously been available within Facebook’s Messages and Messenger app, but not outside messages. But now, they can be used in Comments as well.

“The new feature will not bring anything good, and it will create more spam,” Hoang Anh said, an office worker who reportedly spends 2.5 hours in the evening on Facebook.

“It seems that Facebook is trying to create a new communication style, the Doraemon-like style, childish and odd with spam messages,” she said.

Even users who access Facebook only occasionally have expressed dissatisfaction about the sticker feature.

Hoang Hung said he feared that the new feature would make the current problem worse.

“A lot of people just click ‘like’ after reading the posts. By doing this, they try to show that they have read the posts. However, I hate this way,” Hung said. “When you just ‘like’ and don’t leave any comments, you are really impolite.”

“I am afraid that the new sticker feature in Facebook will encourage people to continue this impolite behavior,” he said.

Nguyen Thanh Ha, a high school teacher and also a member of the social network, warned that the overuse of stickers may lead to serious consequences.

“It may happen that youth give up language interaction and use stickers instead when expressing their opinions,” he said.

Sharing the same view, a literature lecturer at Hue University, said communicating  through stickers, icons and pictures instead of words should be condemned.

“I think the problem is really worrying,” he said. “In the past, people used icons when chatting through Yahoo Messenger. And now, it is once again a problem. I am sure that more spam entries will be posted.”

However, many Vietnamese youth have expressed their interest in the new feature.

They say the stickers can show their mood, which is a “good thing”.

“Sometimes you want to express your opinion in a special way. And using stickers could be a wonderful idea,” one 10th grader said.

He said that adults worried too much about youth behavior.

“Please see the stickers as just one of many communication methods,” he said. “Don’t believe that the lives and characters of people will change just because of stickers. We know what we should and should not do.”

Huong Dung