PieFed v1.4 (to be released very soon) will have emoji reactions on posts and comments. An emoji reaction can be a unicode character like 😍 or a colon-delineated string like :piefed: which gets automatically converted into an image when the post/comment is displayed.
Setting a reaction uses the same API endpoint as casting a vote (and behind the scenes reactions are federated as Likes, for Lemmy compatibility) but with an emoji element added to the JSON payload.

Also when looking at a post or comment in the API there is an emoji_reactions element that can be used to get a summary of the reactions that have happened so far. Compare https://crust.piefed.social/api/alpha/comment?id=456791 with https://crust.piefed.social/post/84566#comment_456791 to see what I mean.
Do a GET on /api/v3/site to retrieve a list of all the custom emoji (the ones with :something:) that this instance knows about and to find what images to convert usages of them in emoji_reactions to.

16 Comments
Blaze@piefed.zip · 8 pts · 266d
Great addition !
SolarBoy@slrpnk.net · 3 pts · 266d
So if you give an emoji reaction thumbs-down 👎, it will count as a like?
rimu@piefed.social · 10 pts · 266d
Currently, yes. I'll see how this plays out with people using it before adding special cases for some emoji. There's no technical reason why not to make it downvote...
I'm holding back on it because downvotes aren't supposed to be "I don't like this" or "this makes me feel sad" like an emoji is.
It may turn out that overloading votes like this is bad. But I hope it works because choosing an emoji is already lots of clicks so I'd like to avoid a extra click for upvoting.
Skavau@piefed.social · 13 pts · 266d
If you do add it to work like that, you'd need to make it abundantly clear that a thumbs-down is a downvote. Or people will accidently downvote without meaning to.
I don't think it should work like that. It'd be a good way to express disapproval without downvoting, which is desirably used for spam/off-topic/hateful content (as it is mostly used on the fediverse).
SolarBoy@slrpnk.net · 4 pts · 265d
Yeah, i think it would be even more confusing if certain emojis counted as downvotes.
chisel@piefed.social · 2 pts · 265d
Except that reactions count as upvotes, so I don't think it'd actually be a good way to express disapproval without downvoting.
Skavau@piefed.social · 1 pts · 265d
Upvotes aren't really controversial though. One assumes if you give a thumbs up or a :100: that it counts as an upvote in itself, which is fine. But many other reacts may have more abstract uses.
teft@piefed.social · 1 pts · 265d
I would prefer it not downvote. I don’t downvote content but i’ll give someone a thumbsdown if they’re being a turd.
silverpill@mitra.social · 2 pts · 265d
@rimu I sent two reactions, one unicode and one with a custom emoji. The unicode one worked as expected, but the second one with :catjam: is not rendered properly. Also it seems to have replaced the unicode reaction.
wjs018@crust.piefed.social · 3 pts · 265d
Interesting. It shows up, but just as the shortcode:
@rimu@piefed.social - not sure what the json looks like coming from mitra, but at least in the short term it might make sense to just have piefed interpret emoji it doesn't understand as an upvote (like it had been doing up to now) so that it doesn't break the UI like this.
cabbage@piefed.social · 1 pts · 264d
Also adding :catjam: might be a good idea—it seems to be the ruling emoji of the fediverse.
Edit: I might have just missed it on account of the disco theme.
INeedMana@piefed.zip · 1 pts · 265d
I think there can be only one reaction. I added one, clicked another, and the previous one disappeared. After adding it back the second one's number dropped
rhythmisaprancer@piefed.social · 1 pts · 262d
Because I didn't pay enough attention to the other post with all the updates to really understand the details of how emojis worked (specifically where they go), I just left a rather strange emoji.... Is there a way to remove this? Future update maybe? I accept my mistake but this seems like a good option.
rimu@piefed.social · 1 pts · 262d
If you do another emoji it'll replace your first one.
rhythmisaprancer@piefed.social · 1 pts · 262d
That can work!
url@feddit.fr · 1 pts · 253d
Thats like sharkey or akkoma :)