4 ms·

This is all over the road, but that's not out of the ordinary when it features "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" being name-dropped in the middle of it. I do

This is all over the road, but that's not out of the ordinary when it features "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" being name-dropped in the middle of it. I don't really get the axe-grinding about stereotypical nerdboys having some nefarious influence on expression through control of emoji fontsets. Emojis are silly little pictograms. If you want something more varied, send an image or a gif or a meme. Or settle down and type out a few of these things we call words, that have the capability to be very expressive and unambiguous.

rafael859 8y ago
I think that the article makes a pretty good point that emoji are increasingly important in communication -- referencing the suggestion of the mosquito emoji that was supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in order to facilitate communication and discussion about the malaria-spreading insects. Even though I don't completely agree with the importance of emoji in modern communication, apparently a lot of people (especially some of those who vote on the Unicode Standard Consortium) do. If you were to accept that emoji are an important part of modern communication, would you not agree that censoring certain images is akin to censoring words? Then, the reference to "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" is very apt. I didn't get the impression that the article was suggesting that the people who vote in the Consortium have any sort of nefarious intensions -- and I don't think that there is much to be gained by a fascist government by censoring the word "shit". The decision to do stems from personal taste, prudence, or social pressure. It is not the intention behind it that we should be afraid of, but the power of some organizations to form our means of communication, independent on how "good" they are, as there are many unpredictable factors that can shape their decisions.

rafael859 8y ago

I think that the article makes a pretty good point that emoji are increasingly important in communication -- referencing the suggestion of the mosquito emoji that was supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in order to facilitate communication and discussion about the malaria-spreading insects. Even though I don't completely agree with the importance of emoji in modern communication, apparently a lot of people (especially some of those who vote on the Unicode Standard Consortium) do. If you were to accept that emoji are an important part of modern communication, would you not agree that censoring certain images is akin to censoring words? Then, the reference to "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" is very apt. I didn't get the impression that the article was suggesting that the people who vote in the Consortium have any sort of nefarious intensions -- and I don't think that there is much to be gained by a fascist government by censoring the word "shit". The decision to do stems from personal taste, prudence, or social pressure. It is not the intention behind it that we should be afraid of, but the power of some organizations to form our means of communication, independent on how "good" they are, as there are many unpredictable factors that can shape their decisions.