"we put a dialog in front of people and they made a selection, therefore people wanted this dialog"

You're suggesting that it's impossible for people to have wanted a feature, because UXs have a popup showing people that it's possible to use that feature now. I disagree. You're projecting your personal opinion as everyone's personal opinion.

And that emoji picker still allows you to pick the default yellow color. So if people -really- didn't want to use them, they wouldn't.