Arguably, your NPR link backs-up the decision. The fact that Apple's emoji's often diverge considerably from the Unicode standard (and set their own, divergent

Arguably, your NPR link backs-up the decision. The fact that Apple's emoji's often diverge considerably from the Unicode standard (and set their own, divergent emotional meanings) is a pretty good argument --- for an avowedly cross-platform app such as Emacs --- to maintain consistency across operating systems.