Facebook rolls out more-diverse emojis
The platform announced that its 1,500 new avatars—featuring several skin tones, red hair and more females—are ‘more representative of the world we live in.’
On Wednesday, the social media network announced 1,500 new emojis that are rolling out worldwide today.
“From skin tones that you can choose to lots of women in great roles, Messenger is beginning to make emojis more representative of the world we live in,” Facebook said in a post introducing the new icons:
Facebook said that almost 10 percent of Facebook messages sent on mobile devices contain emojis, but its offerings didn’t live up “to the gender and skin tone diversity that we see in our world every day.”
Users can select their skin tone in Facebook messenger, so that emojis will follow the set preference. Though users can change this option as much as they like, users can also set their skin tone preferences once and not worry about it again.
The new emojis also offer Facebook users “gender-agnostic options” and feature several female emojis. “Now, using Messenger emojis, you’ll see a female police officer, runner, pedestrian, surfer and swimmer for the very first time, and we’ll keep rolling these out,” Facebook said.
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