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

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.

Comments

Arrggggg Emoji politics.

[LWATCDR]

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

Re:Arrggggg Emoji politics.

[Austerity Empowers]

Then of course we have design by committee emoji's, each trying to reflecting a political interpretation of the emoji, justified by possible idiot interpretations of a pictograph. These people must live in some pretty sheltered places, because they have apparently not yet conceived of idiots powerful enough to misinterpret just about any emoji in a fatally mistaken way. We know these idiots exist, we see them every day. Usually in traffic.

I think we should simply remove weapons and weapon words from the english language. This should surely create a safer society.

How the hell are gun emojis tied to violence?

[speedplane]

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.

Re:How the hell are gun emojis tied to violence?

[El Cubano]

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.

I side with Microsoft

[randomErr]

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.

Standards and Definition

[Anonymous Coward]

Unicode defines the glyph (U+1F52B in the "Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs" block) as "pistol" with the keywords "gun, handgun, pistol, revolver, tool, weapon." This is unambiguously not a symbol for a toy. Apple is in the wrong here for not adhering to standards, but being wrong and not adhering to standards has never stopped them before, so this shouldn't really be a surprise.

Re:Emojis part of unicode to begin with

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:B-b-b-but GUNZ is SKEEERY!!

[swillden]

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.