Have you read the article? theguardian.com/…/canada-judge-thumbs-up-emoji-si…. I think that the thumbs up was actually pretty clear in this case. He had a history of accepting contracts which had already been discussed verbally with a short text like “Ok” or “Looks good”. It seems very likely that “👍” meant the same thing.
Emoji doesn’t have anything to do with it. The fact is that he was responding to a legal agreement informally. There is really no difference between “Looks good” and “👍”. This is only a story because he tried to weasel out when the price shot up.