4 ms·

What About the Afghanistan Flag Emoji?

58 points by robin_reala 5y ago

swiley 5y ago
What about it? This is a problem for font authors and on reasonable OSes you can choose your font.
- delecti 5y ago
  The two OSes with emojis most thoroughly embedded throughout (Android and iOS) are not "reasonable" by your definition. That's fair, but it rather shuts down discussion on the subject of emojis.
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  By that argument, mobile OSes are unreasonable because they make it difficult to install fonts.
  - swiley 5y ago
    Mobile OSes are unreasonable in general because you can't manage many aspects of the system, fonts being one of the most basic ones.
- shaftway 5y ago
  It's not just a problem for font authors. What happens with this can change the intent of what people are writing pretty radically. If someone tweets "I support [afghanistan flag]" and that's seen by the wrong people with the wrong font it can literally mean the difference between life and death for the poster. Edit: Flag emojis aren't supported on HN
  - swiley 5y ago
    If it's that much of an issue they should just remove the flag and the messages will be sent as |A||F|.
  - swiley 5y ago
    Also: (sorry to respond twice) but the flag will show up the same way per device regardless of who the message comes from anyway.
  - aatharuv 5y ago
    See also, Mobile vendors change the gun emoji to a picture of a squirt gun. Are you sending someone a death threat or telling them to cool off with a super soaker? https://www.inverse.com/article/44132-google-gun-emoji-goes-water-gun#:~:text=A%20new%20update%20for%20Google's,is%20now%20the%20industry%20standard https://www.inverse.com/article/44132-google-gun-emoji-goes-....
    - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
      I'm still kind of surprised we haven't had a news story in which a school official with an iPhone tweeted: "Come to family water day and bring your :gun emoji:" And parents with an (older) Android phone saw it and became very upset!
thamer 5y ago
> The choice of how and when to update any emoji flag design rests with platform owners like Google or Apple. [...] The related question is whether the international community recognizes a Taliban flag as valid. Back in 2014 when ISIS invaded large parts of Iraq and Syria and declared a caliphate, this made me wonder what it would take for a new flag to be added. Of course there was no chance their flag would ever be added, but the decisions seem to be a bit more nuanced than just _international_ recognition. See for example the Taiwan flag emoji being hidden from the iOS keyboard in China and not even being rendered if someone looks it up somewhere else.[1] I could see something similar happening for the Afghan flag, where it would be rendered differently based on which countries recognize the Taliban as the legitimate rulers of Afghanistan (if they do end up taking power, which at this point seems likely). [1] https://blog.emojipedia.org/one-emoji-doesnt-show-on-ios-in-china/ https://blog.emojipedia.org/one-emoji-doesnt-show-on-ios-in-...
deleted 5y ago
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deleted 5y ago
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ljm 5y ago
Microsoft have taken an unconventional position here by refusing to render the actual flags at all. Instead, you just get the country code. The Afghanistan Flag emoji in Windows 10/11 is literally just an icon that says 'AF'; same for all of the others.
- zinekeller 5y ago
  There's already a precedent in Microsoft to be non-confrontational when depicting geographical features, one of these is the map on the Time Zone setting (now removed): https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20030822-00/?p=42823 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20030822-00/?p=42... A very good quote at the end: “Geopolitics is a very sensitive subject.”
- Wowfunhappy 5y ago
  After reading the article, I feel like this was the right approach, and the Unicode consortium should never have added flags in the first place. > If the Afghanistan Flag emoji does change to represent a Taliban-controlled nation, the meaning of prior text that includes this emoji will change.
  - zinekeller 5y ago
    The Unicode consortium never added flags, like ever. Regional indicators are intended to be "This is an ISO-assigned region", looking like 🄰🄵 than a flag or something, however they acknowledge that implementations would add flags anyway.
    - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
      I mean, Unicode's emoji reference list does call them "flags": https://unicode.org/emoji/charts/full-emoji-list.html#country-flag https://unicode.org/emoji/charts/full-emoji-list.html#countr...
      - zinekeller 5y ago
        ... yes, but it was just tossed on because a) backwards compatibility to East Asian scripts (they do have three flags, plus the personal flag of Kim Il-Sung that was rejected (including the larger-font "Kim Il-Sung" and "Kim Jong-Il"), of course), plus PUA use of, for example, the US and German flags. I think this that not adding it would be problematic geopolitically and technically, but at the same time only adding East Asian flags sounds like favouritism, so the steering committee is in a lose-lose situation.
daveslash 5y ago
This all assumes that Afghanistan remains named "Afghanistan". The unicode for the flag is two code-points (U+1F1E6, U+1F1EB), which are Regional Indicator Symbol Letters "A" & "F", respectively. But what if the country is given a new two letter designation to reflect an updated name? Looks like maybe "is" is not taken in ISO 3166-1? [Edit] IS is taken, for Iceland per ISO 3166-2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-2:IS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-2:IS

58 points by robin_reala 5y ago

swiley 5y ago

What about it? This is a problem for font authors and on reasonable OSes you can choose your font.

delecti 5y ago
The two OSes with emojis most thoroughly embedded throughout (Android and iOS) are not "reasonable" by your definition. That's fair, but it rather shuts down discussion on the subject of emojis.
selfhoster11 5y ago
By that argument, mobile OSes are unreasonable because they make it difficult to install fonts.
- swiley 5y ago
  Mobile OSes are unreasonable in general because you can't manage many aspects of the system, fonts being one of the most basic ones.
shaftway 5y ago
It's not just a problem for font authors. What happens with this can change the intent of what people are writing pretty radically. If someone tweets "I support [afghanistan flag]" and that's seen by the wrong people with the wrong font it can literally mean the difference between life and death for the poster. Edit: Flag emojis aren't supported on HN
- swiley 5y ago
  If it's that much of an issue they should just remove the flag and the messages will be sent as |A||F|.
- swiley 5y ago
  Also: (sorry to respond twice) but the flag will show up the same way per device regardless of who the message comes from anyway.
- aatharuv 5y ago
  See also, Mobile vendors change the gun emoji to a picture of a squirt gun. Are you sending someone a death threat or telling them to cool off with a super soaker? https://www.inverse.com/article/44132-google-gun-emoji-goes-water-gun#:~:text=A%20new%20update%20for%20Google's,is%20now%20the%20industry%20standard https://www.inverse.com/article/44132-google-gun-emoji-goes-....
  - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
    I'm still kind of surprised we haven't had a news story in which a school official with an iPhone tweeted: "Come to family water day and bring your :gun emoji:" And parents with an (older) Android phone saw it and became very upset!

thamer 5y ago

> The choice of how and when to update any emoji flag design rests with platform owners like Google or Apple. [...] The related question is whether the international community recognizes a Taliban flag as valid. Back in 2014 when ISIS invaded large parts of Iraq and Syria and declared a caliphate, this made me wonder what it would take for a new flag to be added. Of course there was no chance their flag would ever be added, but the decisions seem to be a bit more nuanced than just _international_ recognition. See for example the Taiwan flag emoji being hidden from the iOS keyboard in China and not even being rendered if someone looks it up somewhere else.[1] I could see something similar happening for the Afghan flag, where it would be rendered differently based on which countries recognize the Taliban as the legitimate rulers of Afghanistan (if they do end up taking power, which at this point seems likely). [1] https://blog.emojipedia.org/one-emoji-doesnt-show-on-ios-in-china/ https://blog.emojipedia.org/one-emoji-doesnt-show-on-ios-in-...

deleted 5y ago

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deleted 5y ago

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ljm 5y ago

Microsoft have taken an unconventional position here by refusing to render the actual flags at all. Instead, you just get the country code. The Afghanistan Flag emoji in Windows 10/11 is literally just an icon that says 'AF'; same for all of the others.

zinekeller 5y ago
There's already a precedent in Microsoft to be non-confrontational when depicting geographical features, one of these is the map on the Time Zone setting (now removed): https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20030822-00/?p=42823 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20030822-00/?p=42... A very good quote at the end: “Geopolitics is a very sensitive subject.”
Wowfunhappy 5y ago
After reading the article, I feel like this was the right approach, and the Unicode consortium should never have added flags in the first place. > If the Afghanistan Flag emoji does change to represent a Taliban-controlled nation, the meaning of prior text that includes this emoji will change.
- zinekeller 5y ago
  The Unicode consortium never added flags, like ever. Regional indicators are intended to be "This is an ISO-assigned region", looking like 🄰🄵 than a flag or something, however they acknowledge that implementations would add flags anyway.
  - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
    I mean, Unicode's emoji reference list does call them "flags": https://unicode.org/emoji/charts/full-emoji-list.html#country-flag https://unicode.org/emoji/charts/full-emoji-list.html#countr...
    - zinekeller 5y ago
      ... yes, but it was just tossed on because a) backwards compatibility to East Asian scripts (they do have three flags, plus the personal flag of Kim Il-Sung that was rejected (including the larger-font "Kim Il-Sung" and "Kim Jong-Il"), of course), plus PUA use of, for example, the US and German flags. I think this that not adding it would be problematic geopolitically and technically, but at the same time only adding East Asian flags sounds like favouritism, so the steering committee is in a lose-lose situation.

daveslash 5y ago

This all assumes that Afghanistan remains named "Afghanistan". The unicode for the flag is two code-points (U+1F1E6, U+1F1EB), which are Regional Indicator Symbol Letters "A" & "F", respectively. But what if the country is given a new two letter designation to reflect an updated name? Looks like maybe "is" is not taken in ISO 3166-1? [Edit] IS is taken, for Iceland per ISO 3166-2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-2:IS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-2:IS