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   Jeremy Burge (jeremyburge@mastodon.world)'s status on Wednesday, 06-Mar-2024 15:10:50 JST Jeremy Burge

   Redesigned family emojis are here. The old ones? Close enough for white families to find useful, but useless for black families. The new ones? Equally useless for everyone.
   https://www.mobiletechjournal.com/the-family-emojis-are-now-equally-useless-for-everyone/

   • Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: likes this.
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     Jeremy Burge (jeremyburge@mastodon.world)'s status on Wednesday, 06-Mar-2024 15:10:47 JST Jeremy Burge

     in reply to

     I’m posting this because I don’t want our black and brown friends having to defend this online. Some will care about this, and some won’t. But there has always been a contingent of folks online who insist on belittling any group that asks for better emoji representation.

     If you are a white family that misses the older yellow family emojis; that effectively demonstrates what black people had been missing all these years.

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     Jeremy Burge (jeremyburge@mastodon.world)'s status on Wednesday, 06-Mar-2024 15:10:49 JST Jeremy Burge

     in reply to

     Previous decisions considered that as yellow emojis are intended to be neutral or 'non-human', it wasn’t deliberately exclusionary having no black families. Because theoretically there weren't white families either. Only yellow.

     But given studies show how white people use the yellow / default emojis at higher rates than those with darker skin, the family emoji situation was left favouring light-skinned families until now. From 2020: https://blog.emojipedia.org/on-families-and-equality/

     Anil Dash repeated this.
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     Jeremy Burge (jeremyburge@mastodon.world)'s status on Thursday, 07-Mar-2024 00:17:32 JST Jeremy Burge

     in reply to

     Different approach between vendors on this: Apple is making all the older family emojis gender neutral, while Google has kept the gendered options showing different hairstyles for each person.

     What is consistent is the commitment to replacing any and all family options with silhouettes https://blog.emojipedia.org/googles-emoji-15-1-support-in-noto-color-emoji/

     Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: likes this.
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     Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 07-Mar-2024 00:18:23 JST Rich Felker

     in reply to

     • Leon Cowle

     @leoncowle @jeremyburge Um, that aspect looks like it really is erasure of meaning. The family emojis had very explicit "gay parents" and "lesbian parents" meaning that folks using them obviously intended to convey, and changing a font to fold those all to the same is... not cool.

     Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: likes this.
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     Leon Cowle (leoncowle@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 07-Mar-2024 00:18:24 JST Leon Cowle

     in reply to

     @jeremyburge In addition to the welcome removal of a white-like skin tone, I also love the removal of gender, and it’s now just people.