You've put port 8080 in "url". This should be the actual URL that people visit, and not the port on which the server should listen. You can specify the actual listen-port in config.json as follows:
"port": 8080,This will fix the emoji-issue you're talking about 😉 (along with many other problems that may come up because the clients are trying an unresolvable port 8080)
Source:
(docs.nodebb.org)