Hector Martin

Hot take: if you think Apple should get rid of the "anti-gay emoji" (a technical feature of Unicode, not an explicit thing), you should also get rid of images, as they can be used for the same purpose. And text altogether. This is a people problem, not a technology problem. https://twitter.com/HeyItsShuga/status/1098041971459928065 …

There is no technological solution for hate. Hate is horrible, but we can't fix it by adding special cases to font rendering algorithms. Those who wish to spread hate will do so regardless.

Yeah, it's not like the Unicode consortium added a swastika. Platforms can try to filter as harassment, maybe, but just because 8===D is a dick doesn't mean you delete the letter D. That being said, the frustration is understandable, but there's not a clean solution here.

This is the problem with the nature of tech. As long as you have character joiners (a needed thing, if not great), the no-sign (a useful character), and diverse emojis that help people express their identity (a really good thing), this will be possible.

Heck Unicode *does* have ࿕ and it's perfectly fine because it has non-hateful reasons to be there (it means completely different things in other cultures). It also has an actual 𓂸, because it's an Egyptian hieroglyph.

Now if Unicode had a swastika set at 45° (that wasn't the result of a generic feature to rotate characters), *that's* when I'd start being worried, because as far as I can tell that is quite strictly a Nazi thing. Intent matters, and this stuff is subtle.