Gmail Unleashes 'Email Emoji Reactions' Onto an Unsuspecting World (arstechnica.com) 35
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: You can now reply to an email just like it's an instant messaging chat, tacking on a "crying laughing" emoji to an email instead of replying. Google has a whole support article detailing the new feature, which allows you to "express yourself and quickly respond to emails with emojis." Like a messaging app, a row of emoji reaction counts will appear below your email now, and other people on the thread can tap to add to the reaction count. Currently, it's only on the Android Gmail app, but it's presumably coming to other Gmail clients.
Of course, email is from the 1970s and does not natively support emoji reactions. That makes this a Gmail-proprietary feature, which is a problem for federated emails that are expected to work with a million different clients and providers. If you send an emoji reaction and someone on the email chain is not using an official Gmail client, they will get a new, additional email containing your singular reactive emoji. Google is not messing with the email standard, so people not using Gmail will be the most affected.
Another weird quirk is that because emoji reactions are just emails (that Gmail sends to other clients and hides for itself), any emoji reactions you send can't be taken back. There's only Gmail's "Undo send" feature for taking back reactions, which delays sending emails for about 30 seconds, so you can second-guess yourself. After that, you're creating a permanent emoji reaction paper trail. [...] If the idea of emoji reactions to email has you selecting the puke emoji, as far as we can tell, there's no way to just turn this off. The report notes that this new feature won't work on business or school accounts. "Emoji reactions also aren't available for group email lists, messages with more than 20 recipients, emails on which you're BCC'd, encrypted emails, and emails where the sender has a custom reply-to address."
Of course, email is from the 1970s and does not natively support emoji reactions. That makes this a Gmail-proprietary feature, which is a problem for federated emails that are expected to work with a million different clients and providers. If you send an emoji reaction and someone on the email chain is not using an official Gmail client, they will get a new, additional email containing your singular reactive emoji. Google is not messing with the email standard, so people not using Gmail will be the most affected.
Another weird quirk is that because emoji reactions are just emails (that Gmail sends to other clients and hides for itself), any emoji reactions you send can't be taken back. There's only Gmail's "Undo send" feature for taking back reactions, which delays sending emails for about 30 seconds, so you can second-guess yourself. After that, you're creating a permanent emoji reaction paper trail. [...] If the idea of emoji reactions to email has you selecting the puke emoji, as far as we can tell, there's no way to just turn this off. The report notes that this new feature won't work on business or school accounts. "Emoji reactions also aren't available for group email lists, messages with more than 20 recipients, emails on which you're BCC'd, encrypted emails, and emails where the sender has a custom reply-to address."
Not working for business? What's the point then? (Score:2)
I really struggle to see this being used outside of a work context. Have you seen kids exchanging emails around? Un-fucking-cool. Does any of the Googlers have any kids, or they've frozen their eggs/sperm [slashdot.org] so they can keep coming up with inane ideas to inflict upon the world?
Re: Not working for business? What's the point the (Score:4, Insightful)
and if you think it means one thing and the recipient thinks it means something else well you got problems. If someone sent me a thumbs up response id either take it as a non-response (it might as well be nothing what the fuck does it /mean/) Or if it was required I would send a message asking for a proper fucking response that positively states the intent/position of the respondent.
maybe im old fashioned but emojis in professional communications have no place.
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Re: Not working for business? What's the point th (Score:2)
ambiguos and can lead to problems [slashdot.org]
Re: Not working for business? What's the point th (Score:2)
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Come on, you're over complicating things. Thumbs up is not an "answer" to an email, especially one with a non-trivial message, but it's perfectly fine when the message is not overloaded. If you sent me a simple message ("I'll do that", or "You were asking for this, here's some more info", or "Folks, I think we should redesign this aspect of the software") and I used thumbs-up and you sent a message for clarification, well ... I'd think you're on the spectrum and patiently explain and not send you emojis again. But they work for a lot of people, without miscommunication. Source: me and my organisation, so your mileage may vary
Exactly. It's basically just a positive-leaning acknowledgement that you saw something.
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Come on, you're over complicating things. Thumbs up is not an "answer" to an email, especially one with a non-trivial message, but it's perfectly fine when the message is not overloaded. If you sent me a simple message ("I'll do that", or "You were asking for this, here's some more info", or "Folks, I think we should redesign this aspect of the software") and I used thumbs-up and you sent a message for clarification, well ... I'd think you're on the spectrum and patiently explain and not send you emojis again. But they work for a lot of people, without miscommunication. Source: me and my organisation, so your mileage may vary
This, emojis (I really hate that word, what the fuck was wrong with emoticon, ugh, I digress) aren't an answer, more of an acknowledgement. If someone thumbs up's a comment on teams it means nothing more than "I've seen and understood it".
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Or yes, I agree to deliver 86 tonnes of flax this fall.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada... [www.cbc.ca]
Re: Not working for business? What's the point th (Score:2)
Just a simple example of the issue
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Be careful with thumbs up. Its ambiguous.
It's also obscene in some cultures.
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Hopefully people working with me respect my own culture, where a thumbs up is considered a positive gesture of either "okay" or "ready". The current usage is coupled pretty close to the cultures of English speaking countries and is a rather recent development. But I'm American, everything about my "culture" is relatively young.
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Hopefully people working with me respect my own culture
Just as much as you respect theirs.
Just hope you are not getting the Roman thumbs up.
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I've also stopped giving the Roman salute to my boss. Apparently cultural norms change over time, I had no idea.
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And stop crucifying preachy hippies on white robes. That's so rude.
People already use emoji in email (Score:5, Interesting)
While Slashdot has remained steadfastly pure in its unrelenting opposition to Unicode - a voice crying in the wilderness, you might say - most applications (including mail programs) have supported emoji for years. Heck, I think Gmail itself already supports emoji in email.
So really all that's "new" here is Gmail is giving you a way to pretend you're just tacking on an emoji as a response rather than sending an email containing an emoji. Just like chat. Except there's a 30-second delay before Google actually sends the message. And possibly a multi-minute delay before the recipient sees the non-email email.
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Honestly I think the primary use-case is a quicker and easier "Read and understood" kind of reply without having to open a new email window, type it in, and send it. Receiving time doesn't really matter in these cases; what's important is basically confirmation that you got the email.
Admittedly though, I'm struggling to think of situations outside of work or school where this would be as useful as it would in those exact non-included settings ...
Re: People already use emoji in email (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah when I read the fine summary my immediate response was BULLSHIT!
As in, "email is from the 1970s and does not natively support emoji reactions" ... BULLSHIT! It fucking well does. You just mail back an emoji. You could even make it backwards compatible with email systems of the actual seventies... by attaching an image of the emoji as a shar or hell, as ASCII art.
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No need for protocol extensions (Score:3)
1) E-mail can support emoji reactions. An emoji reaction can be implemented by a one-click email reply, where the contents in a single emoji. The sender MUA can an X- header to help the receiver MUA to recognize it and display it accordingly.
2) Side topic, E-mail can also support instant messaging like SMS / Whatsapp / MS Teams individual messages and group messages. It surprises me nobody made a email client display theme / mode that mimics the eye candy of modern instant messengers.
Hilariously hypocritical (Score:2)
This type of handling is what Google complains Apple does to their users with message reactions.
Excellent (Score:3)
Vacation message is a poop emoji.
Or a middle finger.
No Thanks (Score:2)
Ugh. No thanks.
Keep the emoji to informal, short form, text message type of communications.
Email is for longer form, more formal communications.
Fuck no! (Score:4, Insightful)
If you send an emoji reaction and someone on the email chain is not using an official Gmail client, they will get a new, additional email containing your singular reactive emoji.
I already don't and won't use Gmail. Anybody who sends me an email which is accompanied by a second email whose only purpose is to send me a fucking emoji, will be put on notice. Three strikes and they're out - their email address goes on my spam list. BTW, fuck Google.
it's a 'feature' (Score:1, Informative)
My boomer manager has started using this shit in the Microsoft suite so he can appear cool with the younger employees.
The rest of us just have to hover over stupid icons to get the tooltip to decipher which particular laughing smiley is supposed to convey which meaning - when he uses 3 in a row.
Communication made harder by shits and giggles technology.
Building up Google's walled garden (Score:2)
If you send an emoji reaction and someone on the email chain is not using an official Gmail client, they will get a new, additional email containing your singular reactive emoji. Google is not messing with the email standard, so people not using Gmail will be the most affected.
How is this any different from the dreaded "green bubble" that every Android fan blasted Apple about?
This is Google's version of Microsoft's Embrace, Extend, Extinguish strategy. If I receive any such emoji email in my mailbox, I will setup a junk mail rule to delete them automatically.
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How is this any different from the dreaded "green bubble" that every Android fan blasted Apple about?
It will be trivial for any email client to add support because email is standards based, that's how. If I were to design this feature I would put the emoji alone in the body of the email and then add X-Emoji-Response: true or similar to the header. This is 100% backwards compatible with existing email systems, and also couldn't be easier to parse out and handle gracefully.
Just... no. (Score:2)
Now it makes sense (Score:2)
They were too busy implementing this bullshit instead of properly supporting third-party email clients. Fuck you, Gmail, and fuck you, Google.
Oh god no, no no NO (Score:1)
Please, no. Just no.
Email was my last refuge.
Outlook has been doing this for awhile (Score:2)
I remember how startled I first was to see some sort of notification in (web version) Outlook, and pulled it up only to see that one of our clients had been "thumbs up" -ing some of my emails.
I have nothing against it in principle, I guess ... it was just odd, seeing my work email turn into a sort of social media experience. (And I'm somebody who has no problem using emojis within the email body itself.)
It works on facebook... (Score:2)
I'll crank through people's comments to acknowledge them on facebook. "Yup, happy birthday, thumbs up, cat pic, thumbs up, vacation photo, thumbs up, they've been away due to cancer diagnosis, thumbs up...oh wait..."
Oh, we've seen this before... (Score:2)
I have had it up to here. HTML email was bad enough; tyvm Microsoft et al. Proprietary bs that belongs in other media (Google RCS/Apple) and not email? Seriously, are people so lazy that they can't click reply, type "LOL," and press send?
Feel free to say "OK boomer," but I'm right.