The emergence of emojis as discoverable evidence is a unique challenge. Here, Cimplifi discusses emojis and how to tame them in discovery!

In their post titled (wait for it!) Taming Modern Data Challenges: Emojis (available here), Cimplifi discusses how, in recent years, emojis have become integral to professional digital communication through a variety of platforms, including email, text, and collaboration apps like Slack and Microsoft Teams. They are no longer simply cultural curiosities; instead, they have often become critical pieces of evidence because they can influence the tone, intent, and legal interpretation of messages.

Before there were emojis, there were emoticons, which emerged in the early 1980s as a way to add tone and emotional nuance to otherwise flat, text-only messages. They relied on basic punctuation marks and keyboard characters, requiring readers to mentally interpret sideways faces.

In 1999, Japanese designer Shigetaka Kurita created the first set of 176 emojis for a mobile internet platform, introducing small pictographs to represent emotions, objects, and concepts. Emojis became widely adopted in Japan and were later standardized by Unicode in the 2010s, enabling consistent rendering across platforms and devices.

As emoticons have given way to emojis in popularity, they have also taken on increased importance in eDiscovery. We didn’t see the first case involving emojis until 2014, but, according to Eric Goldman, there were at least 864 known cases involving emojis as evidence in the U.S. over the next ten years!

So, what are the challenges associated with discovery of emojis? And what are the best practices for emojis and how to tame them in discovery? Find out here, it’s just one click! Clicking will make you happy! 😉

So, what do you think? How is your organization taming modern data challenges in eDiscovery? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Image created using GPT-4o’s Image Creator Powered by DALL-E, using the term “robot lion tamer holding a whip and holding a chair taming a robot lion”.

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Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by my employer, my partners or my clients. eDiscovery Today is made available solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Today should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.