Apple, Facebook and Google ban Rifle emoji from Olympics Update

Technology Giants Ban Rifle Emoji from List of Images

Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft have all come together to stop a rifle emoji from being added to the list of images made available to the users on their smartphones. In the latest update this month, the emoji is likely to join the keyboard listing, though members of the Unicode Consortium, responsible in regulating emoji have voted unanimously to eliminate it in an attempt which the body has described as `bizarre and unusual’.

According to BuzzFeed, Apple had led the decision and had been supported by all the 12 technology giants who are voting members of Unicode, inclusive of Facebook, Google and Microsoft. The pistol emoji would still be available though Apple has mentioned that it would not add the rifle to its services. The resolution of blocking the rifle from being included in the update is not an inconsequential problem.

A man in France, earlier this year, had been sentenced to three months in prison for sending his ex-girlfriend a `death threat in the form of an image’ which was known as the pistol emoji. Though the pistol emoji tends to have no sporting link, the rifle emoji was projected to `represent shooting as a sport’ including hunting and marksmanship as per a submission to Unicode, which is the cause new icons are added.

Rifle – Part of Olympic Themed Group of Icons

This is not the first occasion that Silicon Valley companies have obstructed new emoji from their keyboards. On its macOS keyboard, Apple does not contain the knife and gun emoji while Microsoft had earlier included a middle finger while other companies did not include the same. The rifle had been set to be added to the list of emojis as a part of an Olympic themed group of icons that had included fencing, gymnastics, karate and swimming.

 In the Unicode 9.0 featuring 72 new emoji which will be added along with new animals and foods are fingers crossed, face palm, shrug and hand shake emoji. Unicode has added a cheese emoji, unicorn and burrito in its last round of add-ons. If one wishes to use emoji to actual words, you can now read classic works such as Moby Dick, the Bible as well as plays of Shakespeare, adaptations comprising of YOLO Juliet in pictograms which is due to the enterprising translators and an increasing palette of the little cartoons.

Unicode Approved Emoji – Universal

One will be unable to transcribe accurately The Patriot or American Sniper into emoji since the rifle emoji does not seem to exist. In the firearms collection of emoji, it is handguns all the way down. One of the few weapons in an emoji vocabulary that comprise of some 1800 characters is the revolver and an update is scheduled to be released soon. Unicode 9.0 would be bringing in 72 new emoji with it. A rifle emoji had been decided though it did not come up.

According to unnamed source who had spoken with Buzzfeed News, in a move led by Apple and supported by Microsoft, members of the Unicode Consortium had planned to nullity the rifle at the last moment. The Unicode Consortium silently decides which emoji tends to make it to the big tech platforms. Unlike personalized emoji which tend to need third party applications to view such as Kim Kardashian’s Kimoji, once they are introduced, the emoji approved by the Unicode group tend to become, basically, universal.

Emoji Feminism

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Emojis Designed to Represent Women Better in Workplace

A set of 13 emojis have been designed by Google engineers and according to them represent women better in the world of work. The designs have been presented to the Unicode consortium which is a body that tends to approve and standardise emojis. The team have mentioned that they hope the samples would empower young women, the substantial emoji users and reflect better the fundamental roles that women seem to play in the world and include healthcare workers, scientists as well as businesswomen.

 Emojis are considered to be icons which are being utilised in mobile and web messaging in order to help tell a story. The terms which means picture (e) and character (moji) in Japanese had been added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2013. A group of four Google employees mentioned a New York Time op-ed known as `Emoji Feminism’ as the inspiration for its new design. Amy Butcher commented that `they were told that they are the new generation of American women, no longer a minority and that they in fact, are the majority of breadwinners in American homes and yet the best that they can get is the flamenco – dancer’.

Search Engine for Emojis – Emojipedia

Research done by Procter & Gamble indicated that 82% of girls in the age group of 16 – 24 tend to use emojis daily. More than half of those who had been surveyed were of the opinion that female emojis were stereotypical. The designs of Google comprise of women in technology, construction, farming as well as the food industry. Female musician emoji includes homage to the late David Bowie with a pink zigzag on her face.

Users have the option of choosing from various skin tone and as well as the generic yellow on some of the devices. A search engine for emojis, Emojipedia, had recently proposed that one should also be able to choose the colour of hair and specify gender. All the emojis should be approved by Unicode to ensure that they are displayed properly on the various platforms.

But emojis could look quite different on competing platforms, where a dancer emoji for instance shows up as a ballerina on LG phones, a man disco-dancing on Samsung devices, a yellow blob with its arm raised on Android and a flamenco dancer on iOS. The next set of emoji candidates is said to be released mid-year though it is not known whether the designs of Google will be approved in time to be included in this.

Empower Girls Everywhere

According to its proposal, the objective of Google is to have these emojis in steady use on smartphone and computers towards the end of the year in order to empower girls everywhere. Presently, there are more than 1,000 standardized emojis that are utilised globally depicting everything from ice-cream to dragon to police cars.

But the current emoji selection feels subtly chauvinist, portraying men running and policing while women dance and cut their hair. Google had mentioned in its proposal that `considering the fact the women seem to be the most regular emojis users and they span a wide professional spectrum which is not yet reflected in the present emojis, we want to help address this pressing matter of equality’.

It is a good gesture though there is yet a long way to go in putting women on equal footing in the workplace. According to the latest data from the National Committee on Pay Equity, women in the U.S. tend to make around 79 cents for every dollar earned by men. The gender pay gap is closing since the early 60s though the change has been quite slow.