Emojis are a powerful way of conveying a message. They can be used to express emotions, sentiments, and will often cause a stir when misinterpreted. Binance’s recent tweet regarding emojis appearing as swastikas was pulled quickly, although the concept raises many uneasy questions.
Binance Makes Weird Emoji Choices
It is interesting to see how companies think about emojis today. Particularly for cryptocurrency, there is a booming market where emojis are concerned. Unfortunately, not all companies in this industry make sensible decisions. Binance, the leading crypto trading platform, decided to introduce new emojis on April 20.
It did not take long for people to complain about the design. No one knows who approved these emojis, but they are very close to resembling a swastika. Moreover, the emojis were shared on Twitter on April 20, the birthday of Hitler. Many people immediately connected the dots, even though Binance had very different intentions when sharing these new emojis.
The new Binance emoji is a literal swastika pic.twitter.com/lCOuWuPnyF
— mann0000.eth 🦇🔊 (@nftshare) April 20, 2022
The emojis were seemingly introduced through Twitter’s hashflag feature. For those unaware, a hashflag is an emoji companies can add after paying Twitter to get it added when a certain hashtag is used. In this instance, the hashflag was tied to #binance, #BNB, and #BitcoinButton. Thankfully, it all got removed rather quickly to avoid any further confusion.
The company claims the emoji went through “several layers of review” yet no one noticed it could be interpreted as a swastika. That seems like a very weak excuse, although it is possible many people have not done their jobs properly. The company is working on a new emoji design, which will roll out in the coming weeks.