Great to see this change. The decision to get rid of the gun emoji was itself an act of political activism, highlighting the left leaning bias in many of these

Great to see this change. The decision to get rid of the gun emoji was itself an act of political activism, highlighting the left leaning bias in many of these organizations - or at least the power given to the voices that pushed for those changes. It was a naked way to influence the culture around guns, and make them less visible. But it also killed funny uses of the actual pistol emoji. For the record, the underlying Unicode name is “PISTOL” - not squirt gun or ray gun or whatever. I also think that as harmless as a change from a pistol to ray gun might seem, it is a signal of how far these companies will go to push one particular ideology onto everyone - its employees, customers, etc. These large tech platforms are too powerful and influential to be allowed that kind of deep and far-reaching influence on our politics and culture, and they should behave neutrally as much as possible.