In light of this, the developer should not wield complete control over how these symbols are modified, he said. Upon approaching the entrance to WeChat’s headquarters, however, the artists were told that the company’s emoji designer was not in.Īs someone who has paid close attention to the developments and shifts in public symbols, Wang in early February wrote an article published on the WeChat arts and culture account Dominoart, arguing that, for “large-scale communication tools such as WeChat, the meaning of expressive symbols is defined by both the developer and the long-term user” - more so by the latter, actually. “I believe conversations about these changes must happen in real life before they’re propagated online,” he said. “The set of default emojis had already established a solid base among the app’s users.”įor Wang and his friends, physical protests are a means of breaking free from the online environments that major platforms - including WeChat - exercise considerable control over, and are thus a more effective way of starting a dialogue. “For a large proportion of Chinese society today, WeChat is as essential as a city’s foundational infrastructure, similar to city signs and traffic signals,” he said.