Thanks To Apple's Influence, You're Not Getting A Rifle Emoji (buzzfeed.com)

Charlie Warzel, reporting for BuzzFeed News: Unicode, the technical organization in charge of selecting and overseeing emojis, debated and ultimately decided to remove a rifle from its list of new emoji candidates in 2016, according to multiple persons who attended its quarterly meeting last May. The decision was led and championed by one of tech's biggest companies: Apple. Apple is one of Unicode's largest member companies and not only has voting rights, but also holds considerable influence. Millions of people use emojis on Apple's software platforms. According to sources in the room, Apple started the discussion to remove the rifle emoji, which had already passed into the encoding process for the Unicode 9.0 release this June. Apple told the consortium it would not support a rifle on its platforms and asked for it not to be made into an emoji. "I heard Apple speak up about it and also Microsoft," one member present at the discussions told BuzzFeed News.

Comments

Banning weapons and other unpleasantries

[mi]

So, removal of pistol-emoji is next? And swords and dagger? How about the mosque and the star-and-crescent — a majority of Muslims in the US today would prefer for Sharia to replace the Constitution.

If only we could have the unpleasant facts of life disappear by banning the symbols related to them...