Apple, Facebook and Google ban Rifle emoji from Olympics Update

Technology Giants Ban Rifle Emoji from List of Images

Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft have all come together to stop a rifle emoji from being added to the list of images made available to the users on their smartphones. In the latest update this month, the emoji is likely to join the keyboard listing, though members of the Unicode Consortium, responsible in regulating emoji have voted unanimously to eliminate it in an attempt which the body has described as `bizarre and unusual’.

According to BuzzFeed, Apple had led the decision and had been supported by all the 12 technology giants who are voting members of Unicode, inclusive of Facebook, Google and Microsoft. The pistol emoji would still be available though Apple has mentioned that it would not add the rifle to its services. The resolution of blocking the rifle from being included in the update is not an inconsequential problem.

A man in France, earlier this year, had been sentenced to three months in prison for sending his ex-girlfriend a `death threat in the form of an image’ which was known as the pistol emoji. Though the pistol emoji tends to have no sporting link, the rifle emoji was projected to `represent shooting as a sport’ including hunting and marksmanship as per a submission to Unicode, which is the cause new icons are added.

Rifle – Part of Olympic Themed Group of Icons

This is not the first occasion that Silicon Valley companies have obstructed new emoji from their keyboards. On its macOS keyboard, Apple does not contain the knife and gun emoji while Microsoft had earlier included a middle finger while other companies did not include the same. The rifle had been set to be added to the list of emojis as a part of an Olympic themed group of icons that had included fencing, gymnastics, karate and swimming.

 In the Unicode 9.0 featuring 72 new emoji which will be added along with new animals and foods are fingers crossed, face palm, shrug and hand shake emoji. Unicode has added a cheese emoji, unicorn and burrito in its last round of add-ons. If one wishes to use emoji to actual words, you can now read classic works such as Moby Dick, the Bible as well as plays of Shakespeare, adaptations comprising of YOLO Juliet in pictograms which is due to the enterprising translators and an increasing palette of the little cartoons.

Unicode Approved Emoji – Universal

One will be unable to transcribe accurately The Patriot or American Sniper into emoji since the rifle emoji does not seem to exist. In the firearms collection of emoji, it is handguns all the way down. One of the few weapons in an emoji vocabulary that comprise of some 1800 characters is the revolver and an update is scheduled to be released soon. Unicode 9.0 would be bringing in 72 new emoji with it. A rifle emoji had been decided though it did not come up.

According to unnamed source who had spoken with Buzzfeed News, in a move led by Apple and supported by Microsoft, members of the Unicode Consortium had planned to nullity the rifle at the last moment. The Unicode Consortium silently decides which emoji tends to make it to the big tech platforms. Unlike personalized emoji which tend to need third party applications to view such as Kim Kardashian’s Kimoji, once they are introduced, the emoji approved by the Unicode group tend to become, basically, universal.