Farmer owes $82,000 in contract dispute over use of a ‘thumbs-up’ emoji

The title is a bit misleading but at least this article goes in to detail about how the judge came to his decision. A lot of people misunderstand what constitutes a contract and the simple summary is it's a meeting of the minds and an acceptance of the terms. This is why other things such as handshakes, verbal acceptance, or even non-signatures are valid to accept a contract.

Clearly the past history that these two had together of informal contract acceptance weighed heavily on the Court's decision. As so it should because prior behavior dictates the mindset at the time the terms were reached. Simply because the price skyrocketed from the time of the contract to the expected time of delivery, which can happen in futures markets exchanges, does not negate the fact that this deal had been done in the past in similar methods.

This case could have been about replying Y or "thanks" or a number of responses, because at core it's about the history of past informal agreements between them, as much as claimed confusion about what use of the specific emoji meant.

The headline isn't very informative. Tldr the case revolves around whether a thumbs up emoji constitutes acceptance of a contract.