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INTERNET

Can you guess Sweden’s favourite emoji symbols?

Swedes have a reputation for being both shy and addicted to smartphones, so what do the most popular emojis reveal about the habits and feelings of people in the Nordic nation?

Published: 8 June 2015 12:46 CEST
Can you guess Sweden's favourite emoji symbols?
Swedes love using emoticons. Photo: TT
The red heart emoji* is the most popular symbol used by tech savvy Swedes, suggesting that while small talk might not come easily to many, there's plenty of passion bubbling underneath the surface.
 
Analysts at SwiftKey, a company that makes smartphone keyboards, looked at more than a billion pieces of emoji data as part of a two-step study designed to reveal how different languages around the globe are using the symbols.
 
They also discovered that despite Sweden being famous for crisp breads and sweet buns, the loaf of bread emoji is used more by people typing in Swedish than those using any other tongue.
 
Plus despite the country's strict alcohol policies, the symbol for two beers is used at double the average global rate.
 
Swedes use small pink hearts, high five symbols and winks more often than the global average. They are less likely than most to insert a crying cat, an angry red face or a weeping yellow face into their messages – perhaps a nod to the Nordic nation being one of the happiest in the world.
 

Photo: The Local
 
Swedes also appear to have strong love for a certain bearded gift-giver rumoured to be dwelling in the North Pole. Along with Norwegians and Danes, Swedes used the Santa emoji more frequently than those writing in all other languages. 
 
The SwiftKey research into Scandinavia's SMS habits, was picked up by the Swedish media on Monday, less than six weeks after the company released the first part of its global study, which suggested that several other European nations live up to their cultural sterotypes when sending texts.
 
Spaniards were found to be using the 'party-time' emoji more often than the global average, while the passionate French also showed some love for the red heart. German speakers demonstrated that a yellow face showing an ear-to-ear grin and crying with laughter was their favourite symbol.
 
The latest report also revealed that Finnish speakers are eight times more likely to use more black moon emoji. The report's authors suggest that this is perhaps a nod to the nation's long, dark winter nights. However the symbol was not among the most popular in other parts of sun-starved Scandinavia.
 
* Note: for those living in the stone age, an emoji (or emoticon) is any kind of pictograph used in instant messaging. The first symbols were made popular in Japan.
 

TECH

Cookie fight: Austrian activist in tough online privacy fight

Five years after Europe enacted sweeping data protection legislation, prominent online privacy activist Max Schrems says he still has a lot of work to do as tech giants keep dodging the rules.

Published: 16 May 2023 16:52 CEST
Cookie fight: Austrian activist in tough online privacy fight

The 35-year-old Austrian lawyer and his Vienna-based privacy campaign group NOYB (None Of Your Business) is currently handling no fewer than 800 complaints in various jurisdictions on behalf of internet users.

“For an average citizen, it’s almost impossible right now to enforce your rights”, Schrems told AFP. “For us as an organisation, it’s already a lot of work to do that” given the system’s complexity due to the regulators’ varying requirements, he added.

The 2018 General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) imposes strict rules on how companies can use and store personal data, with the threat of huge fines for firms breaching them.

While hundreds of millions of euros in fines have been imposed following complaints filed by NOYB, Schrems said the GDPR is hardly ever enforced. And that’s a “big problem”, he added.

He said the disregard for fundamental rights such as data privacy is almost comparable to “a dictatorship”. “The difference between reality and the law is just momentous,” Schrems
added.

‘Annoying’ cookies

Instead of tackling the problems raised by the GDPR, companies resort to “window dressing” while framing the rules as an “annoying law” full of “crazy cookie banners”, according to Schrems.

Under the regulation, companies have been obliged to seek user consent to install “cookies” enabling browsers to save information about a user’s online habits to serve up highly targeted ads.

Industry data suggests only three percent of internet users actually approve of cookies, but more than 90 percent are pressured to consent due to a “deceptive design” which mostly features “accept” buttons.

Stymied by the absence of a simple “yes or no” option and overwhelmed by a deluge of pop-ups, users get so fed up that they simply give up, Schrems said. Contrary to the law’s intent, the burden is being “shifted to the individual consumer, who should figure it out”.

Even though society now realises the importance of the right to have private information be forgotten or removed from the internet, real control over personal data is still far-off, the activist said. But NOYB has been helping those who want to take back control by launching
privacy rights campaigns that led companies to adopt “reject” buttons.

 Shift of business model 

Regulators have imposed big penalties on companies that violated GDPR rules: Facebook owner Meta, whose European headquarters are in Dublin, was hit with fines totalling 390 million euros ($424 million) in January.

One reason why tech giants like Google or Meta as well as smaller companies choose against playing by the GDPR rules is because circumventing them pays off, Schrems said.

Thriving on the use of private data, tech behemoths make “10 to 20 times more money by violating the law, even if they get slapped with the maximum fine”, he added.

Contacted by AFP, both companies said they were working hard to make sure their practices complied with the regulations.

Schrems also accuses national regulators of either being indifferent or lacking the resources to seriously investigate complaints. “It’s a race to the bottom,” Schrems said. “Each country has its own way of not getting anything done”.

Buoyed by his past legal victories, Schrems looks to what he calls the “bold” EU Court of Justice to bring about change as it “usually is a beacon of hope in all of this”.

Meanwhile, the European Commission is considering a procedures regulation to underpin and clarify the GDPR.

In the long-run, however, the situation will only improve once large companies “fundamentally shift their business models”. But that would require companies to stop being “as crazy profitable as they are right now,” Schrems said.

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