My issue is that this is still just a technological control to attempt to fix a social ill.

I think you misunderstood my goals. It's probably my fault, because I made that pathetic remark about kids dying because of bullying... but I'm not trying to fix a specific social ill. I'm just aware that UX design affects society, and I try to justify the design choices looking at real-life and digital interactions that I think are healthy and effective. You can call that "technological control" if you like, but there's no way out of it, everybody does it when they design a social network.

simply disregard the superficial and the trolls.

My point is that if you don't see the reactions until you hover on the avatars, it's much easier to disregard the trolls, or just people you don't know / don't care about.

Speeches are just as fleeting as applause

Yes, but if you freeze speeches you don't alter their nature, while if you freeze applause you do. That's my feeling, at least. Not a very solid argument, I admit.

I think attempting to create a direct 1:1 between real life and digital is a bad idea.

That's a good point. But it doesn't erase the need to justify each design decision. Why do we have a like button? Why do we count likes? Why do we show them publicly? Why do we want reactions? Why that set of emojis, and not a different one? That's what I'm trying to do. Not fixing specific social ills.

Also, my description of that real-life situation didn't come out of the blue. I included the nodding, for instance, because Dominic said he uses the like button for that purpose. So I asked myself "When do people nod?" and "Is there a better way to translate nodding into digital interactions?".