[demetrius]

My biggest problem with flag emojis is that flags change, so the meaning of text encoded with Unicode changes.

During the 2020 protests, Telegram changed large¹ BY emoji to the national white-red-white flag. Then it reverted the large emoji back to Łukašenka’s red-green flag. So, old conversations no longer have the same flag.

These flags don't have the same meaning! They represent two very different visions of Belarus.

I would really prefer if Unicode encoded flags with date of their acceptance. E.g. BY-1991 or BY-1918 for white-red-white, BY-1995 for red-green flag.

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¹ Small emoji retained red-green flag even at that time.

Also, Telegram has an option to replace large emoji with small emoji, so it was totally possible to send white-red-white flag and have it received as red-green flag, and vice versa.