Iran's flag has been changed on the latest version of the X social media platform, now showing the country's pre-Islamic Revolution flag featuring a lion.
The flag emoji change was initiated several days ago by X's head of products, Nikita Bier, after a user contacted him and asked him to change it to a flag similar to that used by the regime of former shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
“Give me a few hours,” he responded, and later added to the conversation thread a link to the GitHub code storage and app platform, where a spirited debate ensued as to whether or not the flag should be changed, seeing as how no change has taken place in Tehran.
“It's a disturbing display of developer activism,” wrote one user on a GitHub thread related to the emoji change.
Another user pointed out that despite the size of protests throughout Iran, the flag featuring the lion “is not internationally recognised,” and provided a link to the UN media page showing the current flag recognised by the world body.
Because of how emoji codes work, the change made on X resulted in several Iran government accounts and officials displaying the pre-Islamic Revolution flag design – something officials were quick to point out.
Social media has historically played a critical role in helping Iranian demonstrators communicate and share content. Iran's government quickly moved to cut internet service for most in the country, resulting in a multi-day internet blackout.
Some have speculated that amid the blackout, X owner Elon Musk's Starlink low-earth orbit satellite internet service had been activated, but so far there has been no confirmation of such a move.
According NetBlocks, which tracks internet access and digital rights around the world, the blackout has lasted for almost 100 hours.
Other social media apps, and more broadly, on mobile messaging apps on iPhone and Android, the Iran flag emoji has not been changed.
Contrary to popular belief, Unicode Consortium, the authority responsible for standardising emoji codes and digital characters across billions of smartphones and mobile devices globally, does not choose the actual designs used by platforms and apps.
In 2022, Unicode made the decision that it would no longer be accepting new flag emoji submissions, but rather would defer to device manufacturers and developers as to how they might want to depict designs.
“The inclusion of new flags will always continue to emphasise the exclusion of others,” a Unicode blog entry read.
“And there isn’t much room for the fluid nature of politics – countries change but Unicode additions are forever – once a character is added it can never be removed.”
As of the writing of this article, only X has changed the design of the Iranian flag emoji.
