You know what? If you really think about it, favs serve no useful purpose on Fedi. They don't have any real meaning or significance. Emoji reactions make much more sense, because they both serve as an acknowledgement and a meaningful response. Any bot can fav your posts, but only a human can react appropriately to them.
Mastodon is really lagging behind other platforms as a useful means of communication between people.
@ceoln Yes, they serve as acknowledgements, but think about how many other aspects of communication they leave out: an emoji reaction adds meaning. It's not just that the other person received your post, they had an actual human reaction to it.
Then we have the repost. A repost again has meaning. There is someone who thought your idea (or your meme) had merit enough to share it with other people. That's low effort too, but it implies a decision-making process. The other person weighted the pros and cons (what you said may be controversial and paint them in a bad light by association) and actively decided to share your post.
Finally, there's the reply, which even supersedes emojis and reposts: here we have a reaction too, but it's no longer low effort. The other person took the time to think about what you said and either appreciate it, or disagree with it and (most importantly) tell you why. Either way, it's awesome, because it sparks a human connection no matter how brief.
Favs don't have that. They only provide a small dopamine rush that tends to vanish with time, as all things.
@josemanuel
Right, they are basically the minimal unit of validating interaction. I just wanted to make the point that, for me at least, their value is significantly greater than nothing to me as the writer, and take basically the minimal amount of effort and commitment on the part of the reader. And that's often good! :)
I would not want to limit feedback to only people with the motivation and energy and time to comment, or even to select a particular specific emoji, or to decide that my post should appear on their followers' feeds.
So I like that there's a simple one-touch Like / Fav button, and would prefer that to continue to be there even if/when we have fancier things. It has value for me.
@josemanuel
I don't know; they serve a useful purpose for me; seeing a fav on a post of mine tells me someone saw it and liked it. It's the smallest unit of reinforcement by communication, and that's something important. I wouldn't mind there being a variety of reactions available, but having to choose one raises the bar; it's no longer the smallest quantum. I hope when we do get finer grained reactions, most clients also continue to offer the one-touch one...