The Unicode Consortium, the name behind the emojis we use on smartphones, tablets and even computers, made a remarkable statement. In the statements made on the official blog page, it was stated that users will not encounter a new flag emoji from now on. However, this does not apply to flags that will be included in the ISO 3166-1 standard and be recognized globally. Okay, but what harm did the flag emojis do that the Unicode Consortium made such a decision?
The Unicode Consortium didn’t say why it wouldn’t consider work on new flag emojis. However, there is an important implication at this point. The investigations revealed that flag emojis are used much less than other emojis. There is also the matter of the flag crowd. It is already known that when emojis are categorized according to their similarity, flags are the category with the most members. All this seems to have pushed the Unicode Consortium to such a decision.
Controversial regions may also be the reason for this decision
Unicode Consortium makes flag emojis available within the scope of international standards known as ISO 3166-1. flags could not be used as emojis. However, the flag of some regions within the ISO 3166-1 standard was not made into emoji. For example, while the flags of Greenland and Faroe Islands belonging to Denmark were included, the flags of the Autonomous Republic of Abkhazia and Adjara Autonomous Republic of Georgia were not included. The Unicode Consortium seems to have decided to stay out of political discussions with its decision.
By the way; Let me explain for those who are wondering. There are 250 regions in the ISO 3166-1 standard. In other words, if we look at the fact, the region flags emoji we use should be 250 even in this form. Consider adding the flags used in the sports industry and flags that are important for some segments. In such a situation, hundreds of new flag emojis should be available. This will affect devices and software both in terms of capacity and performance…