Belgium is warning its citizens not to use Facebook emojis. Officials issued a cautionary warning about Facebook, stressing on not to use Facebook Reactions so as to preserve privacy.

Earlier in February 2016, a new set of five additional Reactions, expressing emotions like Love, Haha, Wow, Sad, or Angry, were rolled out by Facebook in an apparent response to feedback from users. Users have expressed their desire to have a dislike button, but he company did not enroll the same as it did not want to bring in negativity to the site.

Meanwhile, privacy concerns were raised by Belgium due to the emoji reaction buttons. According to officials, information is being collected by Facebook to based the reactions from the users on the social network. The company is in turn selling the information to advertisers.

Belgium's federal police force posted in a news release saying, “By limiting the number of icons to six, Facebook is counting on you to express your thoughts more easily so that the algorithms that run in the background are more effective. A mouse click can let them know what makes you happy.”

The post continues, “if it appears that you are in a good mood Facebook will infer that you are more susceptible to advertising and will be able to sell advertising space to marketers by telling them they have a better chance to get you to react at certain times.”

- Sumana