Emoji are showing up in court cases exponentially, and courts aren’t prepared - The Verge

The different depictions of emoji across platforms also poses a problem in judicial rulings. For example, depending on what type of phone you’re using, the “gritting teeth” emoji might look a lot different. Not only are emoji designed differently across smartphone platforms, but people interpret the same emoji differently. An earlier design of the grinning emoji on iOS, for example, was interpreted as being far more negative than the same emoji displayed on other platforms.

Despite the potential for emoji to be interpreted in a wide array of ways, emoji experts don’t really exist. “Emoji usually have dialects. They draw meaning from their context. You could absolutely talk about emoji as a phenomenon, but as for what a particular emoji means, you probably wouldn’t go to a linguist. You would probably go to someone who’s familiar with that community, just like they did with the sex trafficking case,” Goldman says.