[wnolens]

I don't know, I actually agree with the farmer here

> “I did not have time to review the Flax Contract and merely wanted to indicate that I did receive his text message.”

That is often how I use it on facebook messenger since it's so conveniently placed.

It's fine that a verbal agreement is binding, but you should have to utter the sentence "I agree with the terms" or when asked a question with a yes/no answer, reply with "Yes".

[notyourwork]

I read a thumbs up in the same way I read "ok" which is affirming agreement.

    Me: "Want to goto the movies?" 

    You: "Ok".
 

We're going to the movies. I don't interpret this as you are acknowledging receipt of my message and will decide later whether or not you will attend.

I would apply the same rationale to a thumbs up. You are saying, ok. Others may disagree.

[kzrdude]

This has tripped me up in stores. You bring 1 item and they tell you, "This thing is two for X (price)". If you then say "Ok" disinterestedly, will they sell you one or two of those?

[notyourwork]

You left out the rest of the sentence which makes it an incomplete sentence. Usually this is followed by "would you like another?" or something along the lines that becomes a yes or no question.

Merely saying "This is two for x." is a statement, not a question.

[kzrdude]

That's why it tripped me up, they didn't ask a question. I just mundanely said "Ok" to their statement and it was understood as an intention to buy

[syockit]

That's why I make it a point to say "I see", "uh-huh" instead of "OK" to such statements, given that it's so easy to be misunderstood even though technically "OK" is an acceptable response.

[GloomyBoots]

It’s more like

“I’ve attached a list of movies for you to go over. Do you want to go see any of them this weekend?”

“[thumbs up]”

If you message requires any kind of action to be taken rather than an immediate answer it becomes very ambiguous.

[DANmode]

I'd caution against that. I'd read it as someone giving you a thumbs-up.

There's an "OK" emoji, which further disambiguates this.

[oneTbrain23]

That is you. Many use it as "I like your idea but not 100% agree with you yet....go on say more and let me think about what my next respond would be for your next comment". The judge is a boomer. Is like asking a gender studies grad student to evaluate AB testing effectiveness for a UI redesign of public survey written in Typescript. If one of the twins committed mass murder with tons of DNA evidence while the other twin is innocent. Both have been able to walk free in many cases. You simply cannot have such ambiquity in contracts offering/signing. You can have ambiguity in the clauses but not at acceptance. Anyway is Canadian. Expected that kind of low quality judgement....quite expected worldwide.

[paxys]

Courts judge intent, not technicality. If the farmer had replied "yes" and later said "oh I actually meant yes I will read the contract later" would you buy that excuse as well?

[throwaway09223]

If people commonly sent a "yes" to acknowledge receipt of a message, then of course I would.

The problem here is that a thumbs up emoji doesn't mean yes. It can also mean "got it." When people send me huge documents I often send a thumbs up long before opening and reading the document.

[NikolaNovak]

Do you do that when they send a message "here's some documents", or would you send a thumb up if the message said "Attached is a proposal for the client, are you OK if we send it out?"

Like, surely, in that case you'd treat a thumb up as a dangerous message to send as an ACK? :-)

As well, do you follow your thumbs up eventually with something else? Because if I read it correctly, farmer had from March to November to follow-up on the thumbs up ... as well, there was previous precedent with that exact farmer, which makes it hard to argue "Oh, those previous times I meant thumbs up as acceptance of contract, but in this case I meant is as just an acknowledgment" :-/

[GloomyBoots]

Based on the article, it sounds like he didn’t use a thumbs up emoji to accept contracts in the previous instances.

A thumbs up is definitely a dangerous reply in the same way that OK is, but people use it that way anyway. And while it was dumb on his part to be unclear, it was also dumb on the buyer’s part to interpret such an unclear answer as an acceptance.

As to not answering, people forget to respond all the time.

[serf]

i'd buy that argument more if there were some official dictionary of emoji meanings -- but aside from their actual :tag: name, there isn't.

Has no one else encountered older siblings/parents/grandparents misusing emojis accidentally just for the sake of keeping up on the social treadmill?

I sure as hell have.

It's a common enough thing that there is an 'It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia' episode that partially revolves around the misinterpretation of emoji meanings.[1]

[1]: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6362508/

[theironhammer]

If I was the one wanting a yes or no answer I would want explicit clarification on what the thumbs up meant.

[mcpackieh]

If you're going to change the farmer's response to make the point, you might as well change it to "I agree with this". He didn't say that, he didn't say yes. He gave a thumbs up.

Imagining some counterfactual in which he said something he didn't actually say is a nonsensical way of determining his intent.

[JohnFen]

I disagree. The thumbs-up was in response to the very clear request "please confirm flax contract."

In that context, I think 99% of people would take that as confirmation of the contract rather than an "I got your message" response.

But it does underline your point, which is correct: when it comes to contracts, it's wise to be as painfully clear as possible.

[HelloMcFly]

> I think 99% of people would take that as confirmation

I think people are waaaayyy to confident that their perspective sits in the 99% majority. I realize you're being hyperbolic, but I'd expect this percentage to be closer to 50% myself.

[dragonwriter]

Outside of criminal convictions and some other special cases, minimally over 50% is often sufficient for the law.

[HelloMcFly]

I'm not debating that, just critiquing the belief that one's own perspective is the near-universal one (especially in this instance when it's quite evident in the comments not to be the case).

[shkkmo]

Well, you can put me in that 1%.

I think it was reckless of the buyer to assume that the contract was approved and to not ask and confirm that the contract was agreed to.

[JohnFen]

> I think it was reckless of the buyer to assume

I do agree with this. It's bad business practice.

[kQq9oHeAz6wLLS]

I often misread "please confirm" with "please confirm receipt of" because so often people ask if you got something at all.

[kzrdude]

Is "confirm contract" a full sentence? I think it sounds like it's missing a few words.

[unshavedyak]

I think i agree with you (but what do i know, hah), but it sounds like it's useful to know we're in the wrong here. Which is to say, this seems to suggest we should alter behavior with these types of things to ensure specificity and explicitness.

[throwaway09223]

We're not in the wrong here. Judges produce absurd findings with regularity -- this case is newsworthy because the finding is surprising and controversial.

If you paw around a bit in law you'll find judges sometimes going out of their way to misconstrue extremely explicit statements to reach the conclusion they want to reach. Being explicit can help, but there's no way to be 100% sure.

[unshavedyak]

> We're not in the wrong here. Judges produce absurd findings with regularity -- this case is newsworthy because the finding is surprising and controversial.

Well, i'm wrong enough in that i don't want something i say to be taken to court when i could have, easily, been more explicit. "Wrong" in the sense that it leaves myself open to needless outcomes.

I generally want to avoid judges at all cost, heh.

[jxramos]

yah thumbs up is a good default low resolution acknowledgement rather than having to type. I say low resolution because some platforms have limited emoji availability to chose from, eg if no :ok: emoji exists to express with. I prefer giving emoji responses like this when I don't want to clutter up my text history that I often later go back and search for to hunt down past conversations. Reducing unnecessary text helps in those efforts, less to have to filter through.