Tuesday, January 30, 2018

"Lawyers gathered at the Atlanta office of a big law firm were debating a head-scratching legal question. What does the emoji known as the 'unamused face' actually mean?"

WSJ:
In one Michigan defamation dispute, the meaning of an emoticon, an emoji-like image created with text characters from a standard keyboard, was up for debate. A comment on an internet message board appeared to accuse a local official of corruption. The comment was followed by a “:P” emoticon.

The judges on the Michigan Court of Appeals concluded in 2014 that the emoticon “is used to represent a face with its tongue sticking out to denote a joke or sarcasm.” The court said the comment couldn’t be taken seriously or viewed as defamatory.