So following the open letter, GitHub silently rolled out the reaction feature people requested. Now we can deprecate the +1 comments.
Example: https://github.com/rails/rails/issues/24142
Pay attention to top right corner of comment.
GitHub silently rolls out “reaction” feature
1–2 of 2 posts
Re: GitHub silently rolls out “reaction” feature
#2Silently? There was a blog post announcing it and the discussion about it is second place on the HN front page right now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11262736