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Comment by aaron695 | Hacker News Reader

This is a symbol that will be used 10s of millions of times in the next few years. If not much much more.

The fact it's even in discussion if it should be there is a huge free flow of speech rights issue.

I'd like to think if you're on hn you see the problems around the fact this was not there years ago.

I want a world were people can communicate exactly as they wish. Not by a standard, especially a standard with morals thrown in.

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I don't disagree with the premise that free speech is important, but it's hard to argue that the absence of a middle-finger emoji is preventing people from being nasty to each other on the internet.

This changes nothing of consequence (but I personally see no reason not to include it).

Indeed, people were already using _|_ before that. (I vaguely remember a bit of Haskell humour around using that sequence of characters...)

probably referring to the bottom type: ⊥

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

I suppose the advantage of a middle finger emoji is it can be understood across (some) language barriers, and it's more concise than a roughly equivalent written insult.

Because before emoticons, there was no free speech?

Also, this may be informative: [1]

Finally, you may be right that this finger symbol will be used 10s of millions of times in the next few years, but I suspect that often it will end the conversation. Hence the symbol may be considered as part of "speech" but it will certainly not aid "communication".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...

Communicating that a conversation is now at an end is often a useful feature, rather than a bug.

But using this symbol is ending the conversation in a disrespectful way, thereby nullifying the rest of the communication.

Who says that a communication is magically "nullified" if it's ended disrespectfully? My expression of negativity and disrespect is just as valid - if not more so - than trying to conceal it in platitudes like you seem to be implying a preference for.

Communicating disrespect is a useful message in and of itself. If I am telling someone to get lost, I don't want to have to pussyfoot around like some character in an Elizabethan novel.

edit - though maybe a Shakespearian play. I wonder if they have an emoji for biting your thumb at someone.

This is similar to stupid crap like Swype and Google's version of it both not inserting curse words when I gesture type them. It's not their business to butt into mine. If I want to gesture type a curse word I should be able to. I understand the issue of possible mistypes being a problem but that's why you turn them off by default and give someone a simple solution to turn them back on.

I'm reminded of a joke that's been repeated many times on twitter. "Dear [Apple|Google|etc.], I never, ever intend to type the word 'duck'"

...what?

Are you opposed to any text format that does not allow user-defined characters?

(Although perhaps you should be if you're a Chinese speaker and have to suffer for applications' poor lack of support for more obscure characters.)

This doesn't make sense. Just because a symbol could potentially be in use does not mean that not having it is a violation of free speech. Where is the symbol with a guy standing on a table mooning his boss? Sure, someone could make that, but thinking that the absence of this symbol creates a "huge free flow of speech rights issue" is ludicrous.

Free speech is about what you can say, not how you can say it.

Each rule we follow blindly is a stupid one. If the introduction of a new sign just promotes hate and brings no advantages, then there is no value gained.

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