There was an apocryphal meme reddit where a carrier apparently sent a text asking how the user would rate the reliability of the network on a scale from 1 to 10. The user replied, "9." The user was notified that there was an error and the text didn't get delivered properly, to which the user replied, "8."

Signaling of the kind the author describes is information. If it truly is as widespread as the author suggests it is valuable-- just take note of the few people not signaling in this manner and then try to forge relationships with them.