Remove or at least change OK hand emoji since it is now considered a symbol for the white power movement

[kubicgruenfeld]

Description:
Since the 👌 emoji is now considered a symbol for the white power movement and therefore promoting hate speech i would like to see it removed or at least a stylistic change to only show two fingers instead of the 3.

Steps to reproduce:
use 👌

Expected behavior:
emoji not present or displaying only two fingers

Actual behavior:
promoting hate speech

Additional context
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK_gesture#White_power_symbol
https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/okay-hand-gesture

[kaiiiiiiiii]

A sign for OK, used for centuries, in diving, in trade, known all over the world, should be removed because a few kids on 4Chan made a joke about its definition years ago and declared it a "white power" symbol?

Please express your political views, whether left or right on other platforms. Every normal thinking person sees an OK sign (as it should be) and not any right-wing idealogy.

Just use common sense and don't act like a left or right-wing lunatic. Not everything has to be politicized to infinity, otherwise we won't have much left to live for ...

Just my 2 cents ....

// By the way, the emoji already consists of 2 instead of 3 fingers, no idea what you want to change at all.

[kubicgruenfeld]

@kaiiiiiiiii you seem to confound the emoji on GitHub with the emoji I am referring to.

Sure, you can argument against the removal or change. But two things:

1. Would you argument the same about a swastika symbol?
2. Please don't get personal. This is GitHub, not Twitter. Please don't call me lunatic or speculate about my common sense. Thanks.

In my opinion, everything is political.

[Fulviuus]

@kaiiiiiiiii you seem to confound the emoji on GitHub with the emoji I am referring to.

Sure, you can argument against the removal or change. But two things:

1. Would you argument the same about a swastika symbol?

You mean this one? 卐
Yeah, that is a standard unicode character.
Everything needs to be put into context, and if you read the actual adl.org recommendations they state themselves that:

"Use of the okay symbol in most contexts is entirely innocuous and harmless."

[engelgabriel]

This is the current ok_hand on joypixels

Maybe we could just lose the 3rd finger... like other emoji libs did?

Refs: RocketChat/Rocket.Chat#17996

[kubicgruenfeld]

@Fulviuus Do you know in which context it is used? If it doesn't exist, it can be used in a harmful context. Easy, isn't?

I know the swastika symbol is a ln unicode character. But is it also available in the other direction? Guess what, it isn't. Originally it was used in both ways, but my ancestors used it in a harmful way, so there is no character in the direction which was used in the 3. Reich. So thanks for supporting my argument.

[Fulviuus]

@Fulviuus Do you know in which context it is used? If it doesn't exist, it can be used in a harmful context. Easy, isn't?

I know the swastika symbol is a ln unicode character. But is it also available in the other direction? Guess what, it isn't. Originally it was used in both ways, but my ancestors used it in a harmful way, so there is no character in the direction which was used in the 3. Reich. So thanks for supporting my argument.

Direction? What are you talking about? You mean the facing of the unicode character?
What I pasted above is the Nazi version of the symbol, you might want to go back and check your history books.

But in any case, here are both variants for you: 卐 卍

If you mean the 45 degrees rotation of the symbol, that was purely done for aesthetic reasons, as a matter of fact here it is used straight on a Nazi medal:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross_of_Honour_of_the_German_Mother

Also, since we are at it, why not, let's also add the Nazi SS Emblem (two Sig runes): ᛋᛋ

But hey, by all means please continue your crusade to have the OK sign, which as mentioned above has been used forever to universally express "it's all good", removed or altered because a bunch of kids from 4chan decided to promote it as a white supremacy sign "for the lulz".

[kubicgruenfeld]

Ok, my fault with the svastika character.

[sistason]

I just want to point out that you can decide that it's fun by "a bunch of kids from 4chan", but that doesn't make it true.
It is now actively used, even high up the political ranks, by white supremacists as a sign for white supremacy, no matter the origin.

The OK-Hand symbol might not be a Swastika, a symbol which probably cannot in our lifetime be used for any other meaning besides fascism (at least in Europe/US contexts). But that does not mean it needs a third reich to react to fascists and their symbols.

Removing or Changing the symbol would be both a message and a hindrance to those people, both very good actions we can do as software developers.

[oseiberts11]

Changing the emoji seems simple enough to me, and gets rid of the bad meaning without losing the neutral one.

[gjask]

I am completely at loss here. I basically do not comprehend why any symbol should be daemonized, labelled evil or even forbidden just because it is somehow related to hate crime. More so that it mostly has other completely fine meaning.

As we do not forbid using lets say scissors just because somebody may use them for stabbing and killing. But scissors are not tool for killing people, they cut paper or fabric. If anybody uses scissors to kill, it's his doing not scissors'. If you would actually ban scissors because they can be used as lethal weapon, the attacker probably would just chose another easily available tool for his crime. (I do not use firearms in this comparison as guns are actually designed and meant to be killing weapons). Would you really be for banning scissors then?

Please do not think I want to excuse any hate crime, fascism or racism. I just do not think this is a way how to fight against those things. As a pair of scissors as a symbol is not inherently good or bad. Only people can give a meaning to a symbol. And fighting against symbol which may somehow be connected to hate crime, that is actually how you help to empower that symbol's meaning. In that way you actually promote such thinking.

We should fight against bigotry with education and punish those who actually commit crime. But if we instead decide to just take away tools which can be used to commit crime we not only lessen our freedom we also put arguments in hands of our opponents and promote their cause whatever that may be.

[sistason]

@gjask: I get that point of view. I won't argue with you here, since there is lots of information on this topic already, as whole countries have their explanations, reasoning and background to why they ban certain flags or certain symbols.

Germany outright just bans certain symbols since they are only used to symbol affection for one of the biggest atrocities in the history of mankind.
Some countries ban symbols/flags of (deemed) terrorist organizations and I'm sure you find their reasoning when you look for it.
In the US there is discourse about the confederate flag. Not banned, but the reasoning of what it means showing it or what this flag represents to folks whose ancestors were enslaved, that also should be pretty easily accessible.

I'd just like to encourage you to ask yourself and then check why these people go so far as to ban symbols, which are in itself just symbols used by people, the same as scissors like you said.

I could presume, that some people don't have symbols/flags specifically used by groups advocating for their murder/genocide of their entire community. That always puts things in perspective and I'd advocate we listen to them for what certain symbols represent to them.

In this example:

• OK-Hand is used by Nazis.
• Nazis want, for example, to eradicate Queer people.
• Me, a person who happens to be queer, finds the symbol "(mis-)used enough by Nazis to be a sign making me think of Nazis, comparable to Sieg-Runes".
• I therefore prefer some solution to mitigate a) Nazis using it and b) seeing that symbol and thinking of Nazis
• changing the symbol changes this discomfort. Removing the symbol leads to people using different symbols with the same meaning, all fine (green checkmark, thumbs up, green box with "ok", etc)
• The community here can decide if my perspective and therefore my reasoning is valid for them and if they want to accomodate me, or not.
• Both actions hold a statement. Which one this community, in their space, with their software, wants, is up to you working on this piece software.

[NeumimTo]

OK-Hand is used by Nazis.

Oh no, did germans elected hitler again?

[NeumimTo]

OK-Hand is used by Nazis.

Oh my god. Obama was nazi as well? I'm literally shaking right now!!

[onexdata]

To my shock and awe, Microsoft teams literally removed the OK symbol. It didn't modify it. It removed it. They didn't even remove it from their official documentation or announce it, meaning they didn't ask, they didn't think, they just reacted. (See https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/view-all-available-emojis-b9c2ccda-9ad9-4dbb-a25d-bbcebf6311ae, then try to actually invoke an (ok) symbol as specified in Teams. You can't.)

To calm my children down whenever they got stressed and to remind them everything is OK, I would use 👍 👍 👌 ("thumbs up, way up, a-ok"). Now, I can't do that in Microsoft Teams, which stinks, because my company also hired my daughter, who is LGBTQ, who is being asked to take on leadership roles and she gets stressed because she is unsure of herself.

I started a non-profit anti-corruption group. I volunteer at soup kitchens and go to anti-hate protests. I go to anti-racism workshops every month and volunteer for projects with the CDC and donate to the NAACP.

The well-meaning people that attempt to make "safe-spaces" for my children, are actually harming my children.

I am 100% certain that society currently uses the OK symbol to describe "everything is ok" at least 5 orders of magnitude more than "hey, psst, we're all racists here, hate, hate, hate, this is so cool that we can hate like this, secretly, without people 'getting it', MUA HA HA".

Removing the OK symbol from technology is absolutely stupid. Nothing stops racists from just switching to thumbs up, thumbs down, or rock paper scissors.

Trying to remove hate from society by removing societies ability to express itself has been echod a thousand times in literature as the exact wrong thing to do. This does not help anyone, ever.