When you report, or you mute those notes or authors, you are engaging with them: you are creating Report Events or adding their keys or IDs to mute lists or block lists. It's the same thing as a reaction. Same thing happens on clients that mark event's as read, etc. Those are all interactions. 

There is no way to only interact with positive content on Nostr. It's the wrong way to look at it. You are always interacting. That interaction can be positive or negative. But they will always be there... As they should.

Clients don't need to parse reactions into positive or negative if they don't want to. The only thing they absolutely CANNOT assume is that all reactions should be interpreted as the author supporting them.

We will make it more transparent that it's being sent. Right now only people using Amber can see the reaction event being signed together with the report and the mute list change.