Credit: https://blog.emojipedia.org/twemoji-2-6-emoji-changelog/
Twitter has replaced its gun emoji to a water emoji. Apparently, this is an update that is aimed at sending the right message to the Twitter community that the microblogging company wants to get rid of harassment from its platform.
The Twitter gun emoji is popular for the wrong reasons, and now Twitter has replaced it with a water gun emoji. That is more like it considering the number of issues it [the gun emoji] keeps generating on the Twitter platform.
It is no secret what one of Twitter’s biggest headaches is; the microblogging platform is struggling to deal with harassments on its network. The gun emoji was a strong source of online harassment before the replacement, and the microblogging company may just have made one of its biggest moves to deal with the problem.
Samsung, Apple and WhatsApp all got rid of their pistol emojis a while ago, so it is not like Twitter made the move first. That said, the move will calm the nerves of some critics who were not that comfortable with the pistol emoji in the first place.
“The main problem with the different appearances of the pistol emoji has been the potential for confusion when one platform displays this as an innocuous toy, and another shows the same emoji as a weapon. This was particularly an issue in 2016 when Apple changed the pistol emoji out of step with every single other vendor at the time,” said Jeremy Burge, founder of Emojipedia per TechCrunch. “Now we’re seeing multiple vendors all changing to a water pistol image all in a similar timeframe with Samsung and Twitter both changing their design this year.”
Some minor changes were also made to the kitchen knife emoji. The blade is now more curved, making it look more like a chef’s knife. It now spots a dark grey bolster at the top of the handle, while the handle has now been curved in addition to spotting two metal rivets.
Regardless of how you view these changes, a statement has been made with the updates, especially replacement of the gun emoji. Of course, some users might view these changes as an attempt to censor their rights to use any emoji of their choice, Twitter might just be seeing things differently.
“I know some users object to what they see as censorship on their emoji keyboard, but I can certainly see why companies today might want to ensure that they aren’t showing a weapon where iPhone and Samsung Galaxy users now have a toy gun,” Burge says. “It’s pretty much the opposite to the issue with Apple being out of step with other vendors in 2016.”
Other changes made Emojipedia can be viewed on their page. Some other changes made include, the modification of the Crystal Ball, the Alembic where the water inside is now looking darker among other changes.
