PSA: Instagram Story emoji sliders are not anonymous

Here's a hot tip: If you vote in one of those emoji slider polls your friends may be posting to Instagram Stories — to gauge how cute a dog is, say — your friends will absolutelybe notified of your answer.

There is no anonymity here.

Take, for example, a recent emoji slider on my own Instagram Story:

Credit: Damon Beres via instagram Credit: Damon Beres via instagram

My friend Rebecca decided this dog was extremely — almost comically — lowon the "yas???" scale.

Her defense? "I didn't know you could see individual responses."

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You sure can.

This is becoming tale as old as time for the internet's favorite photo-sharing and data-collection platform. You can already see exactly who viewed your Instagram Story, and who took a screenshot, so of course you can see how your friends fiddled with that emoji knob.

And, in fairness, maybe that's the whole point. Not all emoji slides are created equal: I respect Rebecca's opinion more than most, so I'll take her vote to heart and throw this dog in the garbage.

(Kidding! I'm kidding. It's not even mine.)

Still, remember this the next time you're tempted to dunk on a friend's charred brunch frittata or whatever: They'll know it's you. And given Facebook's track record with this sort of thing — they own Instagram, don't you know? — it's possible this will come back to haunt you decades down the line, when The Dog Beings from Beyond have ascended as the ruling caste and their secret paw police (or whatever) are doing background checks to see who lives and who gets shipped off to, like, the kibble factory.

Think carefully about your choices, is all we're saying.

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