Mastodawn

Kate Morley Feb 23

There must be a Unicode geek here who can explain why the heart emojis include grey, pink, and light blue variants, but the circles and squares don’t?

🖤🩶🤍🩷❤️🧡💛💚🩵💙💜🤎
⚫️　⚪️　🔴🟠🟡🟢　🔵🟣🟤
⬛️　⬜️　🟥🟧🟨🟩　🟦🟪🟫

Cat 🐈🥗 (D.Burch)

@katemorley @Tattooed_Mummy Because the Unicode Consortium is mean when it comes to emojis :(

cc: @AccordionBruce

neocat_flag_transbian

@catsalad @AccordionBruce @Tattooed_Mummy @katemorley i mean they even rejected pride flags, idk why anyone still expects anything from them

@alice @catsalad @Tattooed_Mummy @katemorley
They did the 🏳️‍🌈 & 🏳️‍⚧️ flags but have stopped doing flags entirely except ones handed down by the folks who do (also remarkably Byzantine) country code assignments

So there’s no Basque Country flag, after years of requests

But Britain decided to add the Isle of Sark 🇨🇶 in 2024 because their historical flag empire wasn’t big enough 🇦🇮🇻🇬🇰🇾🇨🇰🇫🇰🇲🇸🇵🇳🇸🇭🇬🇸🇹🇨🇬🇧🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

AccordionBruce Feb 27

@alice @catsalad @Tattooed_Mummy @katemorley
Here’s a bit from @emojipedia on #unicode deciding not to decide on new flags

Propose A New Emoji, But No More Flags
April 4, 2022
https://blog.emojipedia.org/propose-a-new-emoji-but-no-more-flags/
🏳️ #emoji

Propose A New Emoji, But No More Flags

Today Unicode has opened submissions for Emoji 16.0, meaning people from around the world can propose new emojis for inclusion in our global emoji keyboards. However, there won't be any new flags.

Emojipedia - The Latest Emoji News

AccordionBruce Feb 27

@alice @catsalad @Tattooed_Mummy @katemorley

@emojipedia also wrote about the Syrian flag changing, and various others

Including the interesting new Pan-African vs old “snake”/slavery flag of #Martinique. I saw a proposal to change their #emoji but it wasn’t clear what the process would be

https://blog.emojipedia.org/will-the-syrian-flag-emoji-be-changed-when/

neocat_flag_transbian

@AccordionBruce @catsalad @Tattooed_Mummy @emojipedia @katemorley that's not a problem for pride flags and never was one

neocat_flag_transbian

@catsalad @AccordionBruce @Tattooed_Mummy @emojipedia @katemorley and if the concern is "oh but what if their design changes" - emojis had had a million of those changes already and it was never a problem until pride flags got mentioned. E.g. https://emojipedia.org/beaming-face-with-smiling-eyes#designs or https://emojipedia.org/pistol#designs would be some of the notable examples

beaming_face_with_smiling_eyes

Meanwhile "oh, this font has

while the other one has

" is a non-issue. Same as twemoji changing

old_twemoji_pleading

to

new_twemoji_pleading

is a non-issue in practice

😁 Beaming Face with Smiling Eyes Emoji | Meaning, Copy And Paste

A yellow face with smiling eyes and a full-toothed grin, as if saying Cheese! for the camera. Teeth may be smoothed over or crosshatched. Often expresses a radi...

Emojipedia

AccordionBruce Feb 28

@alice @catsalad @Tattooed_Mummy @emojipedia @katemorley
The pride flags seem like pretty clear and stable designs

Most of those other differences, especially like the ones Twitter has been doing lately, are differences between the platforms
https://blog.emojipedia.org/x-expected-to-update-its-iranian-flag-emoji-design/

Unicode isn’t in control of that and it’s often a mess

Reading one of these articles, I guess Microsoft doesn’t have flags on their platform at all? Maybe only in Word? I didn’t know that

X Updates Its Iranian Flag Emoji Design

Earlier today, X (fka Twitter) updated its design for the 🇮🇷 Flag for Iran emoji within the official Twemoji GitHub. Proposing a historic design for the flag not previously used across emoji keyboards, this change would be the X's first emoji update since its 2024 revisions of the 🔫 Pistol emoji.

Emojipedia - The Latest Emoji News

AccordionBruce Feb 28

@alice @catsalad @Tattooed_Mummy @emojipedia @katemorley
I wasn’t involved in the emoji until I did my proposal for the 🪗 in 2019

So I wasn’t around when the two pride flags got proposed and approved

And haven’t seen the fallout from the controversy around trying to get the other flags in

I can imagine the frustration

neocat_flag_transbian

@AccordionBruce @catsalad @Tattooed_Mummy @emojipedia @katemorley according to https://moreprideemojis.com/ it even took 4 attempts for the trans flag

More Pride Emojis

Information about the effort to propose more pride flag emojis.

More Pride Emojis

AccordionBruce Feb 28

@alice @catsalad @Tattooed_Mummy @emojipedia @katemorley
Thank you for that. Happy to see the campaign info

Unicode has been approving less and less

Not sure if the days of centralized emoji may be shifting somewhere

I worked with some music archivists on a #PhonographEmoji last year that got declined

But they don’t tell you, why or how you should improve your proposal if you want to resubmit in a few years

It’s a mystery I try not to take too seriously 🤷🏻‍♂️

neocat_flag_transbian

@AccordionBruce @catsalad @Tattooed_Mummy @emojipedia @katemorley to be clear, I’m not involved in that campaign, I’m an observer

neocat_flag_transbian

@AccordionBruce @catsalad @Tattooed_Mummy @emojipedia @katemorley i know, but them conflating country flags and pride flags is extremely questionable, and the justification is complete bullshit which comes across as telling an already very vulnerable group of people to fuck off:

Identities are fluid and unstoppable which makes mapping them to a formal unchanging universal character set incompatible.Like what? They are being asked to add very specific symbols, and this is their reply?

Like - languages are also fluid and unstoppable, didn't seem to have been a problem.Hearts are among the most frequently used type of emoji and the nine colored hearts are often juxtaposed next to each other to denote markers of emotion (“I’m sorry 💙” or “love you ❤️”) and identity or affiliation that are not represented with atomic emoji in the Unicode Standard (ex. “Pan African pride ❤️️💚🖤”, “Hi I’m bi 💖💙💜”, and yes even sports teams “Go Mets! 💙🧡” ).Ah yeah. I'm sure screen reader users will appreciate "Pan African Pride red heart emoji green heart emoji black heart emoji" and "Hi I'm bi sparkling heart emoji blue heart emoji purple heart emoji". Like that sounds like sth from a matt rose video, but this is quite literally how it would be read out here.

So - that doesn't hold water for even a moment. So no, this is unicode consortium telling queers and screen reader users to fuck off. After all, in a couple years we'll likely be all murdered by people metaphorically carrying 🇺🇸 flags, or 🇷🇺, or even 🇬🇧 (wait no, it would be 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿), or maybe even U+5350 (not gonna type it out, feel free to paste it into a character map of your choice) and stop asking without unicode consortium having to do anything, right? 🙃

AccordionBruce Feb 28

@alice @catsalad @Tattooed_Mummy @emojipedia @katemorley
I don’t know if there’s hope for them to come around on the pride flags. But I’m with you

I assume the mostly political flags issue caused them to throw up their hands and decide not to deal with them all, because flags are the least popular emoji and the most controversial

It probably made it easier to make a blanket decision

neocat_flag_transbian

@AccordionBruce @catsalad @Tattooed_Mummy @emojipedia @katemorley right, like i don't care that much about country flags either. There are good uses for them, but most often than not they are being used for nationalism

AccordionBruce Feb 28

@alice @catsalad @Tattooed_Mummy @emojipedia @katemorley
It’s really tempting to use the country flags as examples for why your proposed emoji is way better than these ones in island protectorates with a hundred people that nobody uses

They have a whole rule about not comparing your emoji with other ones to prevent that 😭

There’s a reason the flags are the last things on the emoji picker list