This Is How Apple Is Taking a Stand Against Guns
Anti-gun activist groups have since pressured Apple to change its pistol emoji, citing the problem of gun violence in the United States, according to Business Insider. Microsoft’s version of the pistol emoji already resembles a toy gun.
But Apple’s decision to take a stand against gun violence has the potential to “cause widespread confusion across platforms,” Business Insider’s Rob Price argued.
Price claimed that replacing an existing emoji with a radically different symbol would “retroactively change the meaning of countless historic messages and texts — setting a dangerous precedent with unpredictable results.”
“We’re in uncharted territory here,” Price notes, explaining that the modern proliferation of emoji usage has resulted in something like a new language, and that “even a subtle change can affect how [an emoji] is emotionally perceived.”
But unlike any other language, the evolution of emojis and their meaning is determined consciously, by a committee.
“Apple is tampering with the meaning of hundreds of millions of old messages, documents, and private communications to score a political point,” Price argues, “and that might not be a precedent we want to set.”
