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

Posted by msmash on from the for-culture dept.

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.

3 of 569 comments (clear)

  1. Re:frist post by kaatochacha · · Score: 0, Troll

    Oddly enough, neither are guns.

  2. Re:frist post by _Sharp'r_ · · Score: 0, Troll

    If they put their hands over their eyes, they can pretend the big bad scary guns don't exist.

    These are the same people who blame white Christian Republican culture when a Democrat gay Muslim shoots up a gay night club, so I'm not sure logic or facts are going to weigh very heavily here....

    --
    The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
  3. Re:frist post by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1, Troll

    Your argument is invalid. There is no linkage between email and guns in the US.

    The important linkage is the one between guns and shootings. We have a lot of guns, so we have a lot of shootings.

    Violence is down because we've taken so much lead out of the environment. The gun lobby is doing their best to put it all back.

    I invite you to read the book The Samurai, the Mountie, and the Cowboy which explores why different countries have different amounts of violence. Spoiler: it's more cultural factors than anything else.

    So, what you're saying is that the United States has a uniquely violent and fucked up culture, and that's why we have more gun massacres than other cultures? Isn't that a good reason to interdict in gun culture? If you knew someone (US culture) that was violent and fucked up, would you think the best approach would be to give them more guns?

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.