Washingtech Tech Policy Podcast With Joe Miller

Can Using Emojis Get You in Trouble? You know what emojis mean. Otherwise, you wouldn't use them. Right? One recent University of Minnesota study found that there can be vast differences between what you and your recipient think that emoji means.Use the wrong emoji, and you may have some explaining to do.  What you think is a smile on your iPhone could look more like a grimace on the recipient's end who is using a different device. Cases in which courts must determine what emojis mean are few and far between, but they do appear from time to time. In one case, a University of Michigan law student accused a fellow student of stalking. The fellow student had texted the victim messages calling himself a "petty bastard" and saying that he wanted to make her "feel crappy". The fellow student attempted to argue that the "wry" emoticons he used negated the threatening and harassing nature of the other texts.   The court disagreed and held that the emoticons did not change the meaning of the texts. My guests today bel