Emoji are legally actionable
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
I invite you to read the decision itself (https://www.canlii.org/en/sk/skkb/doc/2023/2023skkb116/2023s...), rather than rely on mass-media summaries. In this case, the court does not in fact decide that a thumbs-up emoji always means something. Instead, it considers the parties' histories to note that prior contracts between them were often approved with a simple 'ok,' 'yup', or 'looks good'. The parties did not have a history of initially confirming receipt of a proposed contract and then later negotiating terms or having a separate signing.
In that very specific context, the court found that thumbs-up emoji was a short approval much like 'yup'; see paragraphs 21 and 34-36 of the decision.
This is a bit analogous to the “Shouting ‘fire’ in a crowded theater” idea, in that by default my intuition would be that conveying a single word or symbol couldn’t possibly be weighty enough to constitute a crime on its own, but in certain contexts, it probably can.
What if my water pistol turns into a pistol by the time you see it and my harmless fun turns into a threat?
https://money.cnn.com/2016/08/01/technology/apple-pistol-emo...
This isn't a new problem caused by emoji. You could make a similar argument about conversations had over the phone, turn signals, even physical contact.
The simple answer is, it's not "what it looked like to the other person" it's the intent of the author.
In some cases it's the intent that matters, but the law often tries to avoid questions about actual intent because that's too difficult to figure out. Instead the question might hinge on what a reasonable person would have thought, or what the victim actually thought.
Of course the law tries to avoid it. But that’s sometimes impossible, thus disagreements and trials and judges and whatnot.
It’s not like ambiguity causes everything to crash. It just requires judgement that usually gets settled before it gets to court.
Also in a contractual matter (such as marriage), if the “exchange of value” or guarantor is entirely mythical how can such an agreement be binding? It’s not like the injured party can collect from the guarantor.
That’s why some contracts require a payment of a dollar (e.g. patent assignment to your company) so it can be “for value received”. Now if you’re a cryptoweenie I suppose you’d say that the “fiat dollar” is just as mythical…good luck litigating that.
* If we subscribe to principle that "legal system impacting everyone equally" and "personal religious beliefs" should be separate (and I do!:), then "vowing before God to stay with someone" should indeed be "legally absolutely meaningless", unless you also enter in a bespoke legal contract, understood by both parties to be such, with details on what happens when two parties want to terminate the contract, jointly or individually. Basically, if you want to talk "legal contract", let's talk legal contracts, which are rarely truly inescapable and have well established means of binding and exit. If you want to talk divine commitments, by all means, but that's really between you and your divine being of choice, and it is my understanding that most divine systems handle such cases appropriately (whether by eternal damnation or multiples of readily-available virgins, et cetera:). Just, let's not mix them up to make some vague points.
* "Smiley Picture" and "funny written scribble" (a signature) have similarities. We readily in most legal systems accept "if I use a funny written scribble to really really mean something, no take-baksies!", then what's the real difference to smiley picture?
* Or put it another way, what are the first principle under which a signature should count for something, or a written expression, that a emoji, used to convey same meaning, should not? I.e. if I ask "will you deliver to this contract", and you text back "Yup!" or thumbs up emoji, what is the difference? https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/thumbs-up-emoji-...