“Apple said it is working to bring more racial diversity to its popular set of cartoon icons known as emoji,” Salvador Rodriguez reports for The Los Angeles Times.
“The Cupertino, Calif., tech company hopes to update its emoji icons so they are inclusive of more people, Apple said in a response to an email sent from MTV that was sent to Chief Executive Tim Cook,” Rodriguez reports. “‘There needs to be more diversity in the emoji character set, and we have been working closely with the Unicode Consortium in an effort to update the standard,’ said Katie Cotton, Apple’s vice president of worldwide corporate communications, according to MTV.”
“Because Unicode is in the hands of a consortium and not solely in Apple’s control, the company can’t simply issue an update,” Rodriguez reports. “Instead, the Unicode Consortium must first accept any changes to the Unicode standard.”
Read more in the full article here.
That is so stupid. Emocons convey emotion. There is no such thing as a race-specific emotion!
god save us from good intentions.
I don’t see the point of making a big deal about this. I use emoji only sporadically on my iOS devices, but never on the Mac. It’s one of those features that I could easily do without.
It isn’t a big deal at all, and that’s its value, for it allows the safe venting of excess spleen that would otherwise poison sensible discourse about things that matter
yuck. spleen
will some of the new emoji characters be black (people)?
Maybe that queer bait Cook will have homo mojis too
Sigh. The human race will collapse under the weighty hatred of all the “X”s of the world. We deserve it.
Wow! maybe Apple should work on something that brings shareholder value like new products. Emojis are not critical.
Blasphemer!
One or two racists are wielding all of the power in this thread and I think we all know where that power is coming from, don’t we?
Racists are trolls of the highest order who grow more powerful each time they outdo their last offensive comment.
MDN should have killed this thread already to derail a platform for the racists to spew their hatred. They’ve been known in the past to kill select comments and where are they now?
It speaks volumes about the character of those who run this board.
I agree with your point about the kind of people posting to this board. I don’t think MDN should do anything about it, though. The last thing we need is more censorship on the web.
“Some nations less resilient than the United States, where illiteracy is high and where democratic traditions are only budding, might have to take drastic steps and jail these men for merely speaking their creed. But in America, they are miserable merchants of unwanted ideas; their wares remain unsold. The fact that their ideas are abhorrent does not make them powerful.”
Douglas, J., dissenting in Dennis v. U.S.
It wouldn’t be the first time MDN has censored comments, that’s my point.
Myriad websites have moderators who censor obscene comments.
This is not a slippery slope, the issue is whether MDN is going to provide a platform for hate speech that is far removed from technology.
I see your point. I still disagree in theory, but I agree with your premise: this site has done it before, it should do so again. That’s sound to me.
At least, let’s agree to keep fighting the good fight!
Because everyone isn’t bright yellow with a perfectly circular head…?