This is a promising idea, but I think it’s got an important flaw. (John and
Bron have a point, we should specify an encoding, but that’s not the flaw I’m
focused on.)
Reactions != Emojis. My concern is that this proposal may be making a mistake
that is the opposite of Facebook’s. For years Facebook had only “like” and got
lots of criticism. They added a few more reactions and they now get a bit
less criticism. On the one hand, it seems unfair that they have so much power
that they can dictate the set of acceptable emotional reactions for mankind.
But on the other hand, the kitchen-sink list from Unicode.org includes so many
icons that it’s not clear that people will be able to speak a common emoji
language and know what each other’s reactions mean. The emoji list is a vast
superset of the set of shared human reactions. (If someone posts a message
about a political rally, and someone else responds with an icon of a stack of
pancakes, what does that mean? I have no idea. Or, as a color blind person,
can you tell me what am I missing if I can’t differentiate between a "green
heart” emoji and an "orange heart” emoj!
i?)
I’m no fan of Facebook, but they have kept the set of emojis down to something
that is pretty much universally comprehensible. I think it’s worth considering
whether we can create a set that is less restrictive than facebook’s, but
remains close to universally comprehensible. It’s tempting to say that emojis
are trivial, but if the Internet is all about facilitating human communication,
a common emotional language for reactions would be a big help. — Nathaniel
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