so discord partnered with a new payment company which allows people in germany to pay with a bunch of local payment providers instead of the usual "credit card or you're fucked". and this is not an ad, this might even loose discord a bunch of money. stick with me for a bit. to advertise that, this little guy shows up in your friends menu and the buy nitro screen:
nothing special, right? there's just a slight issue. try to spot it if you want to!
props to you if you noticed it: the flag. that specific curve, and that specific lighting on the flag. that might look a bit familiar to a lot of you, and for a good reason: it is an emoji! and not just any emoji: that looks very similar to the apple color emoji flag! so let's compare them:
uh oh! those look awfully similar! so let's dig a little deeper. instead of using their electron app (where you can't zoom or use the devtools), i opened discord in my browser and looked at it a bit more closely. and we have the raw image file!
discord made it even better for me by using a SVG, which we can dissect because it's just plain text. so i took a look at the <defs>, and would you look at that, we have the flag!
it is encoded as a b64 url, so i downloaded it as a file and grabbed a reference image from emojipedia, and (visually) diffed them:
photoshop doesn't edit the transparency on the diff so the transparent parts look off, but oh no. that is zero across the board. and the cherry on top:
it is the identical file except for the time header. oh no.
and here comes the funny part: apple wants their fonts to be used on their products only. i can't find the license for Apple Color Emoji, but here's another one of them from the font download page:
APPLE INC.
LICENSE AGREEMENT FOR THE APPLE SAN FRANCISCO FONT
For iOS, OS X and tvOS application uses onlyPLEASE READ THIS SOFTWARE LICENSE AGREEMENT ("LICENSE") CAREFULLY BEFORE USING THE APPLE SAN FRANCISCO FONT (DEFINED BELOW). BY USING THE APPLE FONT, YOU ARE AGREEING TO BE BOUND BY THE TERMS OF THIS LICENSE. IF YOU ARE ACCESSING THE APPLE FONT ELECTRONICALLY, SIGNIFY YOUR AGREEMENT TO BE BOUND BY THE TERMS OF THIS LICENSE BY CLICKING THE "AGREE " BUTTON. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE TO THE TERMS OF THIS LICENSE, DO NOT USE THE APPLE FONT AND CLICK “DISAGREE”. IMPORTANT NOTE: THE APPLE SAN FRANCISCO FONT IS TO BE USED SOLELY FOR CREATING MOCK-UPS OF USER INTERFACES TO BE USED IN SOFTWARE PRODUCTS RUNNING ON APPLE’S iOS, OS X OR tvOS OPERATING SYSTEMS, AS APPLICABLE.
From developer.apple.com/fonts (it is hidden in the HTML source for some reason though)
and knowing Apple, they probably do the same thing for emojis, and emojis definitely fall under the category of fonts:
All graphic works like emojis are protected by copyright. Technically, however, emojis are Unicode characters, which ensures that text on computer systems around the world look similar across all machines and platforms. For example, if you send a fire emoji on one mobile device, it should look almost identical on the recipient’s mobile phone. This means that emojis are actually similar to fonts and typeface that are copyrighted and licensed by the major tech companies who offer use of their emojis. Apple, for example, must buy, license, or create the fonts that are used on their platforms, which includes their emojis. So that means you can’t use Apple’s version of an emoji without getting permission from Apple’s legal department.
From Jason H. Rosenblums website
and it wouldn't even be the first time that Apple does something against this, and even WhatsApp changed their emojis from apple to their own design which resembles their emojis a lot. i can't say it for sure, but i don't think they made them for no reason. and if even WhatsApp doesn't get a license for their messaging app, do you think that apple just hands out a license to discord for a measly 20x15px image that only a small subset of all discord users will see?
i'm not a lawyer by any means, but this smells like apple might not be happy with that, and apple really likes suing people, so you can probably connect the dots here lol
