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The fact that the emoji was "censored" to begin with is weird to me. But the internet is weird and now people will be getting banned from X for using gun emojis

The fact that the emoji was "censored" to begin with is weird to me. But the internet is weird and now people will be getting banned from X for using gun emojis to promote political violence.

theultdev 2y ago
I found it alarming that the meaning of previous texts between many people could be altered by simply changing the glyph of an emote. And noone voted for it, all companies effectively in charge of these emojis (Google, Apple, etc.) decided for everyone that it was for the best. What will they change next, who initiated and coordinated that effort, and why, are all important questions. I'm very much against it. It's the same or worse than altering the text content of a message. Once you put an emoji symbol out there for a character code and it's agreed upon, it should be immutable.
- Bluestein 2y ago
  Next up, "semantic sanitation" by AI.- "There. We tweaked your post a bit. More in line with doubleplusgoodthink now".- "There. We tweaked your post a bit. Doubleplusgoodthink now".- "There. You're doubleplusgoodthink now".- "There. Doubleplusgoodthink".- "Doubleplusgood".-
  - echelon 2y ago
    That is truly horrifying, and I could absolutely see it happening.
    - Bluestein 2y ago
      Indeed.-
  - xigoi 2y ago
    Don’t give them ideas!
    - Bluestein 2y ago
      You're right.- (But they do their own doubleplusgoodthink very well, methinks ...) PS. More seriously, this is a concerning and latent issue. Moderation is a "cost" I am sure they'd like to streamline, and AI scales - as opposed to poor, psychologically "breakable" humans now moderating ... ... so I am sure they'll unavoidably come up with something.-
- bombcar 2y ago
  There was a famous case where emojis didn't line up between iPhone and Android, if I remember correctly - http://grouplens.org/blog/investigating-the-potential-for-miscommunication-using-emoji/ http://grouplens.org/blog/investigating-the-potential-for-mi... or similar Some were really bad and would change the meaning of a message, things like showing a broken heart instead of a heart.
  - bsimpson 2y ago
    The original colored Google emoji (known as flour sacks, blobs, or gumdrops) had personality! Something like 7 years ago, they were neutered in favor of something much more generic; presumably, to make them more closely connote the meaning imparted by iPhone senders. The only one I can think of that's visibly different now is the melting face. I wonder at what point it too will be changed to match Apple.
- xk_id 2y ago
  Such a thin veiled whistle blow against woke culture. The very concept of corporate-curated glyphs restricts and normalises communication to a limited range of concepts pre-approved by the architects of consumer culture. But apparently this is only a problem to you when it tries to discourage armed violence.
  - theultdev 2y ago
    It's not a "veiled whistle blow", it's my personal belief. But yes, I am against woke culture at it's core, vehemently. In no way does an emoji encourage armed violence. Are you against violent video games as well?
    - giraffe_lady 2y ago
      Woke is good, actually. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_Speech_(painting)#/media/File:%22Freedom_of_Speech%22_-_NARA_-_513536.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_Speech_(painting)#/...
      - theultdev 2y ago
        That is a nice painting, actually.
        AnimalMuppet 2y ago
        It is. It is also rather unconnected to "woke", at least as far as I understand woke. Woke to me seems to me more about shouting down people than it is about listening to everyone. (So does "anti-woke". I don't think the painting supports either side; it rebukes both sides.)
    - qual 2y ago
      (Not the person you were replying to) I'm curious what/how you define "woke culture", because the only definitions of "woke" I've ever heard are basically "thing I don't like" or "the left". Neither of those definitions have helped me understand what you are so vehemently against. Can you help me understand what woke culture is to you? This is a genuine question.
- itishappy 2y ago
  What's your opinion on this current change of meaning? The previous one has now been in use for 6 years, many messages are about to change meaning, this time in potentially quite negative ways. Follow-up: What's your opinion on the word "woke"? Do you still use the original agreed upon definition from AAVE, or do you prefer the way conservatives have mutated our language? (The question is rhetorical, but I hope you see the point I'm making.)
  - kortilla 2y ago
    The definition from AAVE is definitely not original. It’s a mutated version as well. The gun emoji had existed as a gun before as well for that many years. Nobody cared about rewriting text history on that change either.
    - itishappy 2y ago
      I think we remember that differently. At the time I recall people caring quite a lot. You can find articles written about it on just about every mainstream media organization. I'm still a bit unclear on your position towards the current changes. Your post makes it sound like you oppose changes in general, but your tone makes me think it's specific to the change from 2016. How do you feel about the current changes?
      - kortilla 2y ago
        People cared, but not the people making the changes. I think the change back is good and we should very strongly push for immutable emoji. The first one was a massive mistake and years of using the squirt gun doesn’t justify it.
- shaky-carrousel 2y ago
  Technological companies absolutely love to infantilize their employees and their users.
- baggy_trough 2y ago
  Tim Cook can definitely fuck off with that water pistol nonsense.
xp84 2y ago
It really is weird. And if someone supported the change, why exactly stop there? We can make fonts have custom ligatures where the letters `gun` together could have a completely different rendering, so we could replace it with a single glyph that looks like "water gun" -- I can't see how that's more absurd than censoring the gun. It's not as though it's more difficult to threaten violence with text than with an emoji.
Dig1t 2y ago
There is nothing stopping you from uploading a picture of a gun and putting it in your post. Why is an emoji any different or more dangerous than letting people upload pictures?
- kortilla 2y ago
  That’s like saying you can put pictures of the letters you need in a post to form words. It’s completely impractical in systems that even allow you to upload pictures and impossible for anything based on Unicode only input
  - Dig1t 2y ago
    Yes but pretty much every single medium where you can use an emoji you can upload a picture. Signal, iMessage, X, FaceBook, etc. This thread is specifically about X so that’s what I mostly am talking about here. But pretty much every communication medium being used allows you to upload pictures. It doesn’t make any sense to me why you’d remove the emoji and not also try to censor all pictures of guns.
    - kortilla 2y ago
      Uploading pictures isn’t enough. Placing emojis in sentences in order is required for anything more than a reaction emoji to the whole thing. You cannot do that on signal, X, Facebook, etc.
roughly 2y ago
> now people will be getting banned from X for using gun emojis to promote political violence. Yeah I… don’t think that’ll be happening. From Twitter, sure, from X?
EasyMark 2y ago
good, if they use it in a threatening manner it's good that they get themselves banned. I've personally gotten 27 people banned on twitter and 11 suspensions. I'm sure some came back but I made sure they didn't just look like russian/iranian bot accounts and were people as best as I could determine. All were obviously white supremacists or people threatening others.

The fact that the emoji was "censored" to begin with is weird to me. But the internet is weird and now people will be getting banned from X for using gun emojis to promote political violence.

theultdev 2y ago

I found it alarming that the meaning of previous texts between many people could be altered by simply changing the glyph of an emote. And noone voted for it, all companies effectively in charge of these emojis (Google, Apple, etc.) decided for everyone that it was for the best. What will they change next, who initiated and coordinated that effort, and why, are all important questions. I'm very much against it. It's the same or worse than altering the text content of a message. Once you put an emoji symbol out there for a character code and it's agreed upon, it should be immutable.

Bluestein 2y ago
Next up, "semantic sanitation" by AI.- "There. We tweaked your post a bit. More in line with doubleplusgoodthink now".- "There. We tweaked your post a bit. Doubleplusgoodthink now".- "There. You're doubleplusgoodthink now".- "There. Doubleplusgoodthink".- "Doubleplusgood".-
- echelon 2y ago
  That is truly horrifying, and I could absolutely see it happening.
  - Bluestein 2y ago
    Indeed.-
- xigoi 2y ago
  Don’t give them ideas!
  - Bluestein 2y ago
    You're right.- (But they do their own doubleplusgoodthink very well, methinks ...) PS. More seriously, this is a concerning and latent issue. Moderation is a "cost" I am sure they'd like to streamline, and AI scales - as opposed to poor, psychologically "breakable" humans now moderating ... ... so I am sure they'll unavoidably come up with something.-
bombcar 2y ago
There was a famous case where emojis didn't line up between iPhone and Android, if I remember correctly - http://grouplens.org/blog/investigating-the-potential-for-miscommunication-using-emoji/ http://grouplens.org/blog/investigating-the-potential-for-mi... or similar Some were really bad and would change the meaning of a message, things like showing a broken heart instead of a heart.
- bsimpson 2y ago
  The original colored Google emoji (known as flour sacks, blobs, or gumdrops) had personality! Something like 7 years ago, they were neutered in favor of something much more generic; presumably, to make them more closely connote the meaning imparted by iPhone senders. The only one I can think of that's visibly different now is the melting face. I wonder at what point it too will be changed to match Apple.
xk_id 2y ago
Such a thin veiled whistle blow against woke culture. The very concept of corporate-curated glyphs restricts and normalises communication to a limited range of concepts pre-approved by the architects of consumer culture. But apparently this is only a problem to you when it tries to discourage armed violence.
- theultdev 2y ago
  It's not a "veiled whistle blow", it's my personal belief. But yes, I am against woke culture at it's core, vehemently. In no way does an emoji encourage armed violence. Are you against violent video games as well?
  - giraffe_lady 2y ago
    Woke is good, actually. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_Speech_(painting)#/media/File:%22Freedom_of_Speech%22_-_NARA_-_513536.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_Speech_(painting)#/...
    - theultdev 2y ago
      That is a nice painting, actually.
      - AnimalMuppet 2y ago
        It is. It is also rather unconnected to "woke", at least as far as I understand woke. Woke to me seems to me more about shouting down people than it is about listening to everyone. (So does "anti-woke". I don't think the painting supports either side; it rebukes both sides.)
  - qual 2y ago
    (Not the person you were replying to) I'm curious what/how you define "woke culture", because the only definitions of "woke" I've ever heard are basically "thing I don't like" or "the left". Neither of those definitions have helped me understand what you are so vehemently against. Can you help me understand what woke culture is to you? This is a genuine question.
itishappy 2y ago
What's your opinion on this current change of meaning? The previous one has now been in use for 6 years, many messages are about to change meaning, this time in potentially quite negative ways. Follow-up: What's your opinion on the word "woke"? Do you still use the original agreed upon definition from AAVE, or do you prefer the way conservatives have mutated our language? (The question is rhetorical, but I hope you see the point I'm making.)
- kortilla 2y ago
  The definition from AAVE is definitely not original. It’s a mutated version as well. The gun emoji had existed as a gun before as well for that many years. Nobody cared about rewriting text history on that change either.
  - itishappy 2y ago
    I think we remember that differently. At the time I recall people caring quite a lot. You can find articles written about it on just about every mainstream media organization. I'm still a bit unclear on your position towards the current changes. Your post makes it sound like you oppose changes in general, but your tone makes me think it's specific to the change from 2016. How do you feel about the current changes?
    - kortilla 2y ago
      People cared, but not the people making the changes. I think the change back is good and we should very strongly push for immutable emoji. The first one was a massive mistake and years of using the squirt gun doesn’t justify it.
shaky-carrousel 2y ago
Technological companies absolutely love to infantilize their employees and their users.
baggy_trough 2y ago
Tim Cook can definitely fuck off with that water pistol nonsense.

xp84 2y ago

It really is weird. And if someone supported the change, why exactly stop there? We can make fonts have custom ligatures where the letters `gun` together could have a completely different rendering, so we could replace it with a single glyph that looks like "water gun" -- I can't see how that's more absurd than censoring the gun. It's not as though it's more difficult to threaten violence with text than with an emoji.

Dig1t 2y ago

There is nothing stopping you from uploading a picture of a gun and putting it in your post. Why is an emoji any different or more dangerous than letting people upload pictures?

kortilla 2y ago
That’s like saying you can put pictures of the letters you need in a post to form words. It’s completely impractical in systems that even allow you to upload pictures and impossible for anything based on Unicode only input
- Dig1t 2y ago
  Yes but pretty much every single medium where you can use an emoji you can upload a picture. Signal, iMessage, X, FaceBook, etc. This thread is specifically about X so that’s what I mostly am talking about here. But pretty much every communication medium being used allows you to upload pictures. It doesn’t make any sense to me why you’d remove the emoji and not also try to censor all pictures of guns.
  - kortilla 2y ago
    Uploading pictures isn’t enough. Placing emojis in sentences in order is required for anything more than a reaction emoji to the whole thing. You cannot do that on signal, X, Facebook, etc.

roughly 2y ago

> now people will be getting banned from X for using gun emojis to promote political violence. Yeah I… don’t think that’ll be happening. From Twitter, sure, from X?

EasyMark 2y ago

good, if they use it in a threatening manner it's good that they get themselves banned. I've personally gotten 27 people banned on twitter and 11 suspensions. I'm sure some came back but I made sure they didn't just look like russian/iranian bot accounts and were people as best as I could determine. All were obviously white supremacists or people threatening others.