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Microsoft Swaps Toy Gun Emoji For Revolver -- Days After Apple Does the Opposite (arstechnica.co.uk)

Posted by msmash on from the battling-over-gun-emoji dept.

The pistol emoji has become a heated topic of debate among people. Apple's decision to replace the gun with a toy pistol is getting a mixed response. Amid all this, Microsoft has announced it is replacing the toy gun emoji with a symbol for a real revolver. ArsTechnica reports: This emoji change is part of the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, which is rolling out now. The move has surprised some, as Microsoft and Apple had been seen as allies in an effort to dial down violence in emoji generally. In June it emerged that the two had successfully lobbied to have a sports rifle removed from the latest collection of emoji, as it was felt that two firearm symbols would be too many.Microsoft says it is only trying "to align with the global Unicode standard." The issue is that despite Apple's thought on the matter, when an iPhone (or iPad or a Mac) user sends a water pistol emoji, people with devices running non-Apple OS are only going to see a regular pistol. The article adds: Analysts had been worried that without standardisation between platforms, intent for violent emoji could be misunderstood. For instance, if someone sent an acquaintance a message using their iPhone offering to come around with some friends and some waterguns, that acquaintance might well misunderstand the thrust of the message if they were using an Android phone and saw a series of pistols.Emojipedia, an emoji reference website has a good suggestion: Apple: Don't change the pistol emoji. At least not today. Hide it. Unicode does not depreciate emojis, but there is no requirement to show all approved emojis on the keyboard. The pistol emoji could be removed from the iOS emoji keyboard without causing any cross platform compatibility issues.

14 of 331 comments (clear)

  1. B-b-b-but GUNZ is SKEEERY!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "We must take away your rights because I don't like them!"

    The cry of the SJW!

    Your rights are subordinate to weakling's feelings!

    1. Re:B-b-b-but GUNZ is SKEEERY!! by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Indeed.

      Stupid Justice Whiners have nothing better to do.

    2. Re:B-b-b-but GUNZ is SKEEERY!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This has literally nothing to do with rights, or whiney SJW types. It's just two companies making decisions.

      And just who the hell do you think is driving such decisions?

    3. Re:B-b-b-but GUNZ is SKEEERY!! by swillden · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Apple's lawyers, you godamn partisan idiot.

      And what is motivating Apple's lawyers to care? You can throw up any number of proximate causes, but the root cause is people freaking out about guns being scary.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    4. Re:B-b-b-but GUNZ is SKEEERY!! by Speck'sBacon · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The 2nd Amendment is the law, and attempts to abrogate it are the opposite of the rule of law.

    5. Re:B-b-b-but GUNZ is SKEEERY!! by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1, Insightful

      This. ACs are well known for demanding companies self censor and refrain from taking a position they don't like. Any action they find offensive must be stamped out. Then they accuse the mythical SJWs of doing exactly the same thing, displaying an almost unbelievable lack of self awareness.

      Anytime someone mentions SJWs, they are probably trying to silence someone else.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  2. Arrggggg Emoji politics. by LWATCDR · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Really the fact that we have Emojis is bad enough having news stories about them is just too much to take.

    --
    See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
  3. Emojis part of unicode to begin with by bmxeroh · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why are emojis part of unicode to begin with? Is it literally just because it became popular with 12 year olds and 30 year olds who still think they're 12 so they needed to do something with them? Couldn't we have just made the right choice, declare emojis absolutely stupid, and take away the phones of people that try to use them? I loathe that my phone highlights words it has an emoji for. "Hey do you want to swap out this perfectly understandable English word for a tiny little picture of the thing your talking about?". "Actually, no I don't. I don't live in a pictographic culture so the written word is just fine. Thanks." I received a text invitation from my cousin (See 30yr old bracket above) to a party and I almost couldn't figure out what it meant. There were pictures of chicken drumsticks, ballons, fried shrimp, those stupid noise makers you blow into, a strawberry, a piece of cake or pie, a hotdog, and a couple of drink looking things. There were more emojis than text, so I just couldn't bring myself to actually respond to that mess.

    TL;DR I hate emojis and everyone that uses them.

    --
    Central Ohio Home Theater Installation - The Theater People
    1. Re:Emojis part of unicode to begin with by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This has been done to death, even on /. and even by old guys like yours truly who don't use them much themselves.
      There are essentially three intertwined reasons.
      1 - Unicode, seeking transcoding compatibility with dingbat fonts includes a lot of dingbats. Although there are many of these, there are somewhat standardised collections and inclusion of standard dingbats in Unicode is useful.
      2 - Unicode, seeking transcoding compatibility with (mainly) Japanese mobile phone character sets, includes many of their legacy characters. This is important because Unicode must support them if it is to be adopted and achieve its goal of improving international text interoperability.
      3 - Text has always missed some side channels. We ourselves of course know this, otherwise we wouldn't type :-) and suchlike. The thing is, coding them as three characters that have fuck all to do with its semantics is insane (why has also been done to death here), hence the need for emoji. They're symbolic, discrete, or at least discrete enough, meaningful, usually part of plain text, so they should be in Unicode.
      That doesn't mean I necessarily agree with everything emoji-related (nor with their over-reporting on /.) but not having emoji in Unicode at all is a non-starter.

  4. How the hell are gun emojis tied to violence? by speedplane · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How the hell are gun emojis tied to violence? I'm a pretty liberal guy, but this is liberalism going crazy. Removing characters from our language is not going to make the world more or less peaceful (and I'm sorry, but now emojis for better or worse, are part of our language). This is some crazy 1984 New Speak stuff.

    --
    Fast Federal Court and I.T.C. updates
    1. Re:How the hell are gun emojis tied to violence? by El+Cubano · · Score: 5, Insightful

      How the hell are gun emojis tied to violence? I'm a pretty liberal guy, but this is liberalism going crazy. Removing characters from our language is not going to make the world more or less peaceful (and I'm sorry, but now emojis for better or worse, are part of our language). This is some crazy 1984 New Speak stuff.

      I am seriously frustrated by this, same as you. When I read "dial down violence in emojii" I thought I was caught some sort of Kafkaesque tyranny of the perpetually offended. I mean seriously, the fact that people get worked up over this is about as laughable as people getting worked up over the old Looney Toons bits with Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote or with Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny (that one usually featured an actual firearm, <GASP>).

      An emojii is literally a cartoon depiction. The world has much bigger problems. For example, real violence.

  5. I side with Microsoft by randomErr · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Emoji's are meant to be a quick and simple way to express what is going on in our lives. Guns are real part of our lives. They can be used for cruelty or entertainment. If we keep censoring every little thing because someone might be offended we'll devolve in and Orwellian society.

    --
    You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
    1. Re:I side with Microsoft by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

      The devolution of the masses is the goal. It will make them easier to eliminate once labor automation makes the majority of them unnecessary.

  6. It's time for the NRA to create some emojis by DrXym · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Maybe an NRA logo, and a happy guy holding his AR-15, and a woman with her concealed carry Ruger LC-9, and a kid with a deer in his sights and a purse snatcher laying dead in a pool of blood. Let's define a shitload of gun themed emojis and submit them to Unicode. If Apple / Microsoft / Google can do it, then why not anyone else. Let's not stop at the NRA either. I'm sure Black Lives Matter, Coca Cola, the Church of Scientology, and NAMBLA all have some great ideas for emojis.

    Perhaps at some point Unicode might realise the fucking lunacy allowing emojis into their system in the first place.