By Jeff Benson
2 min read
In these partisan times, there's still one thing most of us can still agree on: Nazis are bad.
That extends to their leaders (not a lot of babies named Adolf) as well as their chosen symbols. Unfortunately, cryptocurrency exchange Binance rushed out a new Twitter emoji without carefully considering how people might interpret it.
As observers quickly pointed out, it looked a bit like, yes, an un-tilted version of a swastika.
Binance, after collating results from the popular focus group known as Twitter, quickly backtracked from the emoji, which appears whenever someone types #Binance.
"Well that was obviously really embarrassing," Binance's Twitter account wrote. "We’re not sure how that emoji got through several layers of review without anyone noticing, but we immediately flagged the issue, pulled it down, and the new emoji design is being rolled out as we speak."
Making the snafu all the more "embarrassing" was the fact that it was released on Hitler's birthday. (Don't worry: He's still dead.) One can only speculate that someone was toking up on 4/20 and simply forgot the cannabis holiday's queasy relationship to the Fuhrer.
Swastikas have a much less troubling interpretation in the East—home to many of Binance's users and developers. The symbol is a central part of both Buddhist and Hindu iconography.
The Nazis' innovation was to turn the symbol around clockwise and call it Aryan.
Nazis ruin everything.
Decrypt-a-cookie
This website or its third-party tools use cookies. Cookie policy By clicking the accept button, you agree to the use of cookies.