The “thumbs up” emoji in correspondence can be regarded by the court as agreement with the terms of the contract. Susana Kirakosyan, lawyer, chairman of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry subcommittee on business development in the field of residential real estate management, told Izvestia about this.
According to her, in one of the arbitration cases, the court assessed the correspondence of the parties in the WhatsApp messenger (owned by the Meta organization, recognized as extremist in the Russian Federation) regarding the terms of the agreement. The parties had to determine the characteristics of the product (a mobile trading kiosk in the form of a retro van) in an additional agreement. But in the end, the parties did not sign the additional agreement, but entered into correspondence in the messenger. In response to the seller’s SMS indicating the color of the product, the buyer’s representative sent a “thumbs up” emoji.
“This sign in the generally accepted and common understanding when communicating via electronic correspondence means “good,” the court said in its ruling. Therefore, the courts came to the conclusion that he perceived the buyer’s reaction as agreement to the proposed conditions,” Kirakosyan said.
She also noted that it is important to take this into account when discussing the terms of contracts in instant messengers and to be careful in using emoji when discussing a contract.
“There is a rule in civil circulation: silence is not a sign of consent, unless otherwise specified in the law or contract. Agreement with the terms of the contract is expressed by words (orally/written) or implied actions. And now you can express your agreement with the terms of the contract with emoji! In this case, the courts concluded that society clearly perceives the “thumbs up” emoji as a sign of agreement. And consistency in the actions of the buyer himself. The seller relied on confirmation of the conditions, the buyer did not take any subsequent actions to agree,” Kirakosyan noted.
WhatsApp has added the ability to send reaction emoji to your interlocutors in the fall of 2021. Users were able to leave an emoticon, just like in other social networks.
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