After Miley Cyrus quite rightly grumbled about the lack of racial diversity in iOS emojis a long time ago, MTV Act decided to ask Apple what it had done about it. Surprisingly, it turns out, it’s pushing for change!
The enquiry — sent directly to Tim Cook! — was replied to by Katie Cotton, Apple’s vice president of worldwide corporate communications:
“Tim forwarded your email to me. We agree with you. Our emoji characters are based on the Unicode standard, which is necessary for them to be displayed properly across many platforms. 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.”
There’s no obvious date by which the Unicode issues will be sorted, though — so, for now, you’re stuck with an overwhelming white presence in your emojis. [MTV Act via TechCrunch]