Apple and the Gun Emoji

Question for those who are fine with what Apple did: What if Apple had implemented a text filter which changes all occurences of the word “pistol” to “water pistol”. Would that be fine too?

Also, what if the Unicode Consortium later adds an emoji for “WATER PISTOL”? How should it be distinguished from the “PISTOL” emoji? Or should they be identical?

A text filter is very different from the visual representation of an emoji which the unicode consortium gives a lot of leeway to IMEs to implement.

Everyone is only angry about this change because it was a normal pistol first and changed to a water pistol later. What if it was the inverse? Then we'd have people complaining the other way. My point is that people expect the emoji to represent what they've been taught it to represent, but in actuality the IME is the one who chooses how exactly it should look. Just look at the saltine cookie vs the chocolate chip cookie.

As for your last point it's quite unlikely that they would add that because it's too redundant to the pistol emoji. Though for facial expressions, the consortium gives specific recommendations on how to differentiate them and the IME would have to consider those.

Have a look at http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U1F300.pdf to see how much guidance they actually give on the looks of each. For most they list synonyms for searching and related emoji. For some they go more in depth on the look such as for U+1F4DE Telephone Receiver.

I don't think this is a slippery slope towards text modification.

Note that there are already problems with emoji being different across platforms. Here is a short article from the GroupLens people at the University of Minnesota: http://grouplens.org/blog/investigating-the-potential-for-mi...

I'm not a huge fan of Apple's general "safe" content approach either despite being an Apple user, but to me this is a tiny and insignificant political statement relative to all the issues they have with the app store/iTunes content and Beats 1 censorship.

> Everyone is only angry about this change because it was a normal pistol first and changed to a water pistol later. What if it was the inverse? Then we'd have people complaining the other way.

You say that as if it's a counter-argument, but it's really further proof that changing it is bad. Yes, it is confusing to change emojis that used to be one thing to be another thing, so it shouldn't be done, regardless of direction. Opposing all such changes is entirely consistent. If Apple wants a water pistol emoji they should add a new one, not replace an existing emoji that means something else.

The difference here is the intent. And I already explained why they likely wouldn't get a specific water pistol emoji. HNers actually think that they think they changed it to a water pistol because they wanted an emoji to represent a water pistol?

> I don't think this is a slippery slope towards text modification.

Well that's good, because that's not what he was asking.

He was asking if this WERE done in text rather than pictures, would the outcry be any different?

It's not the same.

Saying this is a slippery slope is not true, at worst, this is a bad comparison. The point of this is not that changing images and changing words are exactly the same, rather it is to illustrate the change in a stronger light. A change vs a more drastic change is not exactly the same, but no change at all is better in either area. Emojis are used to represent words, if the heart emoji was changed to a candy heart or even an anatomically correct one, would people be upset? The answer is yes, because the meaning is different. This is not people simply getting mad at change or PC, but it is rather a valid cause for concern of censorship.

Well, it kind of is. A pistol is not the same as a water pistol. An image of a pistol is likewise not the same as an image of a water pistol.

Emojis are supposed to represent a specific meaning, though the visual representation can of course change across platforms. Any gun would be an appropriate representation, but a toy gun is not as it occupies a separate semantic space.

Your own source seems to exemplify why a toy gun doesn't fit. It specifies "pistol" or alternatively a handgun or revolver.

If someone wrote "the man walked in holding a pistol/revolver/handgun in his right hand" you would justifiably be surprised if the writer later explained that it was a bright green toy gun. They're different things.

Imagine if an IME decided to substitute the GLOWING STAR emoji with SUN WITH FACE. They would not be following the guidelines as the sun and stars are semantically separate concepts, even if technically the sun is a star.