Digital Discourse Database

Number of Posts: 2
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Apple's Emoji Gun Control

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 16.8.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | censorship, emojis
Summary | Apple decided to replace the gun emoji with a water pistol emoji, but didn't say why they made that decision. Maybe Apple was influenced by the #DisarmTheiPhone campaign. However, there is a problem: if an Apple user sends an Android user a squirt gun emoji, the Android user will receive a gun emoji. Apple's decision breaks compatibility between different phones. Moreover, Apple wants people to be able to express themselves, so they should not remove tools that allow people to fully express themselves. We should be worried about the role of big companies in deciding and controlling what we can/can't say or what emoji we can/can't use.
Image Description | N/A

Le gardien du temple des émojis

(The guardian of the emoji temple)

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Newspaper | Le Temps
Date | 21.6.2017
Language | French
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | censorship, diversity, emojis
Summary | Mark Davis (President of the Unicode Consortium), who lives in Zurich, talks about emojis. Anyone can submit new emoji proposals; but the proposal needs to be convincing. The Consortium has been trying to be more progressive, which is why people can now use same-sex couple emojis, or a hijab emoji. The Consortium does not accept any brand emojis nor famous people emojis (although people would like to see Jesus and Justin Bieber). Keith Winstein claims that nobody should have the right to tell other people which images they can or cannot use.
Image Description | Photograph of Mark Davis
Image Tags | male(s)

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