Thanks To Apple’s Influence, You’re Not Getting A Rifle Emoji

[onehandle]

You can currently purchase a semi-automatic rifle in a major U.S. city in just seven minutes, but don’t expect to text someone a rifle emoji anytime soon.

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 (earlier this year, the company announced it delivers as many as 200,000 messages per second across iMessage).

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.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/charliewarzel/thanks-to-apples-influence-youre-not-getting-a-rifle-emoji

[Omaha Steve]

1. PPPSSSSTTTT

[OriginalGeek]

3. well to be fair

that's just an image. Nobody can stop someone from creating an image. Apple and M$ stopped a rifle from being represented in the unified character sets that computers use.

[Omaha Steve]

4. OOOHHH

My mistake.

[Eleanors38]

2. Peculiar.

[pnwmom]

5. Thank you, Apple. They understand the power of a symbol. n/t

[Agnosticsherbet]

6. Now there is one reason for me to like Apple.