This is not a story from The Onion. It’s actually happening. Apple is updating their Emoji icon set so that the characters represent more ethnic diversity. I wasn’t aware our tiny text message icons had an ethnicity.
Amazingly, there was even an online petition calling on Apple to add diversity to Emoji. A few celebrities whined about it too.
“Our emoji characters are based on the Unicode standard, which is necessary for them to be displayed properly across many platforms,” Katie Cotton, Apple’s vice-president of worldwide corporate communications, told MTV.
“There needs to be more diversity in the emoji character set, and we have been working closely with the Unicode Consortium in an effort to update the standard.”
The broadcaster approached the company after a petition was posted to DoSomething.org calling on Apple to increase the ethnic diversity found within its emoji keyboard.
Now that I’ve been made aware of the discriminatory Emoji, I don’t think Apple is going far enough. I’m calling for them to tone down the angry Emoji. Receiving an angry Emoji could cause hurt feelings and potentially be used for bullying. I’m starting a petition.
