However, while there are emoji fonts like Google’s Noto Emoji, this doesn’t work system-wide. macOS seems to require sbixOT fonts for proper rendering, which encode color bitmaps instead of SVG assets.

Note: This guide doesn’t exactly apply to iOS, even though many of the listed fonts do have iOS builds available.

Removing Apple Color Emoji

Any emoji font named Apple Color Emoji are set to be the system’s default emoji set. To add support to non-Apple emoji fonts, you probably would want to disable this font.

In Terminal, run this command to disable the default emoji set:

sudo mv /System/Library/Fonts/Apple Color Emoji.ttc /System/Library/Fonts/Apple Color Emoji.ttc.org

This will remove the default emoji font. To re-enable the default emoji set, run this command.

sudo mv /System/Library/Fonts/Apple Color Emoji.ttc.org /System/Library/Fonts/Apple Color Emoji.ttc

Finding New Emoji Sets

For macOS, while you are more limited than on Linux-based operating systems and Windows 10, there are some fonts you can choose from:

JoyPixels

Ideal for: A Different Look

JoyPixels (formerly EmojiOne) supports almost every emoji that Apple Color Emoji supports, and there are two versions available. While there is a free version, commercial use is not permitted, which may be a turn-off for some users.

Download EmojiOne 4.0

Version 5.0 does require an account. Use the “JoyPixels 5.0 Fonts” link.

Download JoyPixels 5.0

Twemoji

Ideal for: Comprehensive Catalog

Twemoji is a free, open-source emoji set from Twitter that is well-maintained and kept up-to-date. Developer Brad Erickson has developed an SVGinOT font that can be used on macOS. However, due to the lack of SBIX data, in most applications, these emoji will be rendered as outlines. It is a good font to have installed if you want to be able to see the newest emoji in some capacity.

Download

Mutant Standard

Ideal for: Adding New Emoji

The Mutant Standard emoji set is an interesting set. While it does not support every emoji in Unicode yet (some which were not implemented intentionally), it does add some unique features such as skin tone modifiers for arbitrary colors, icons for various sexual orientations and gender identities, and new symbols the Unicode spec currently lacks. This font has a SBIX variant, so you can see these emoji in color.

Download

Please note that any of the custom non-interchange characters require both parties to have the font installed.

Bonus: Powerline Font Patches

Ideal for: Spicing Up your Terminal

While this isn’t an emoji pack, it is worth noting because it does add some new characters you can mess with (albeit unintentionally). The Powerline font patch for Go Mono, for example, adds a codepoint with the Go logo, while Roboto Mono for Powerline adds some Material Design icons towards the end of the Private Use Area table.

Download

Please note that any of the Private Use Area characters require both parties to have the font installed.

Installing

While each font may recommend a slightly different install process, if you removed Apple Color Emoji, you can install these fonts via Font Book and ignore complaints about duplicates. You can also install multiple fonts at the same time if, for example, you want to have the Twemoji outline font to act as a fallback for future emoji.

If you want to test your installed fonts, you can do so at https://getemoji.com.

Most of these services are the same: made in Framework7 (which is fine, if they all didn’t look the same) by a closed team with loads of adverts with the goal of fame and fortune (albeit a small one) using apps not signed by themselves. These similarities are the reasons why I feel these alternate stores (which is what I will call them for now on) are so bland and unoriginal: they lack creativity.

Now what if I said that there could be a way to make a good alternate store? One that is creative, unique, and libre?

Let me first say that some decent stores already exist. AppValley signs all of its stuff and is pretty light on ads. TuTu signs apps, but it sometimes messes with the tweaks to use their apps, and TweakBox also self-signs some apps, but is a bit confusing on which ones are self-signed and which ones aren’t. There’s also dozens of signing services, which each have their own pros and cons. None are perfect (excluding revokes), but if they all funneled their ideas into a single, community-organized application (Web app preferably, but no mobileconfig), then it might just be close to my idea of perfection.

Now enough ranting, what are these hinted-at factors that can make a signing service not suck?

Open-Source It!

One of my main gripes on signing services is that they all seem to operate in the shadows, with no way to see what’s actually going on (is the backend doing something nefarious?), as well as being closed for contribution (which isn’t helped that younger developers are often pressured by store operators to help for nothing but “exposure”). A possible solution to this is an open-sourced workflow, such as one offered by GitHub.

GitHub, in fact, is perfect for alternate stores. It has community-centric features, as well as GitHub Pages, providing free static web hosting to services. If an alternate store wants to, the entire collaborative workflow can be done on GitHub, and sticking to GitHub Pages can allow for not just uptime, but quick deploy times and non-essential backend code (most alternate store users keep JavaScript on, and it’s good enough to do much of what alternate stores do).

Open-source also encourages contribution. Does someone want a new feature? They can add it themselves. Want to remove a small bug? Anyone with the prowess can, not just those who have access to a closed-off FTP server.

It’s also more secure than an FTP server, as you don’t have to give random people your credentials, and with GitHub, you and your main team can see and approve all the changes, and if GitHub Pages is used, each change can be applied to production at a click of a button.

Now enough about GitHub and open-sourcing your alternate store. Now what can be done, feature wise?

Be Creative!

Do something different with your service to make it stick out. Try not to use F7 (there is Bootcards which could be a good alternative), and get creative with your UI (just don’t make it look like a template). Sign your own apps and don’t steal from others. Maybe also open your catalog up to signing services, or offer a signing service alongside a free offering. Also, lay back on the ads, and don’t encourage clicking them (that’s likely against the ad provider’s ToS), and maybe allow for desktop browsing. The sky’s the limit! If you want, you could even support multiple platforms (Joseph Shenton and my old project AppSauce did this, despite being something more akin to hollr2099.net).

The point is, be competitive. The real world has competition. Embrace that, don’t complain about someone stealing your idea.

Avoid Arbitrary Restrictions

Another major theme among alternate stores is the .mobileconfig To be honest, they’re pointless, and just a hassle (@1GamerDev even made a site to avoid them). Instead, allow users to decide to add a home screen icon themselves, whether you used a reminder pop-up or not. Also allow viewing of your site on any device (might want to display a compatibility alert though), as this can help contributors improve your service. A big culprit of this is the aforementioned TweakBox, which does both.

Final Thoughts

If you want to really make an alternate store and not something more creative (this idea led to fontPages), you might as well try to be creative doing it.

I would remember older stores such as OpenAppMKT (a Web App-based store) and what they did to grow. It wasn’t too intrusive, it wasn’t entirely locked down, and was a good idea at the time.

The entire point of this was to encourage someone to make a truly open alternate store. Most nowadays are sub-par, and this causes new arrivals to get lost in a sea of unoriginality. So be libre, be transparent, be creative, and don’t be a thief, Cynostial.

So I have heard the rumors of people on Twitter getting shadowbanned, and decided to follow suit by making a Twitter bot that will tell users that they weren’t shadowbanned (because why not, it only took a few dozen lines of Python code). If you don’t know what a shadowban is, it is pretty much an account-wide ban placed on you without your knowledge, but I will explain what this means in more detail later. While making this bot, I learned a lot on shadowbans, such as possible causes and how it affects the account’s behavior.

Most of Twitter’s “bans” can fall into five categories: Suspension, Limitation, Filtered, Withheld, and Shadowbanned, each demonstrated in the below infographic:

Twitter Bans: Visualized

Suspension

A suspension is when an account is completely disabled, preventing use of one’s account until further notice (typically permanent). This usually happens if you break the Community Guidelines, or if an account is reported enough in a period of time (can’t confirm if this is true though).

Limitation

A limitation is when an account has been flagged for breaking the Community Guidelines, but acts as a warning. These typically last no more than a day, and have similar effects as if your account is shadowbanned. You don’t show up in searches, nor do you trigger people’s notifications. Once the given time period ends, your account is restored to normal.

Filtration

Top-level Filtration Warning

Filtration is when Twitter’s algorithms thinks a specific reply isn’t fit to show in a comments section without pressing a “Show More Replies” button. This typically is triggered when vulgar is said in the post. Also under this category is the hiding of “sensitive content,” which doesn’t envelope an entire account, but individual images. A good example of an account like this is @ItMeIRL, a /r/me_irl mirror bot. Most are censored (due to the nature of the posts), but some do show up fine. The difference between this and standard filtration is that this filters through top-level (non-reply) posts, not replies. As a user, you can disable the hiding of “sensitive content” in your account settings.

Withheld

When an account or post is withheld there are typically two reasons why:

1. A specific post has violated copyright law and was taken down on behalf of the copyright holder. A notable instance of this is when YouTuber MKBHD had images of a prereleased Tesla vechicle removed by the photographer, as did news outlet The Verge. If you want to read the full story behind this incident, click here.
2. A government prohibits an account or a specific tweet from displaying in their country due to laws. Countries such as Germany use this to censor far-right accounts (such as those run by neo-nazis). However, Germany doesn’t have exclusive access to this, as any illegal content can be reported to law enforcement, as stated by this support page. This can seemingly also be challenged, as well as the affected user being contacted.

Shadowbans

Finally, shadowbans. Shadowbans aren’t a new concept. Reddit uses this technique on occasion, but Twitter’s shadowbans don’t seem to be what everyone thinks they are: which is to suppress certain accounts. What shadowbans are used for is to counteract spam, and this is where @YouArentBanned, my Twitter shadowban bot, comes into play, not because of the code behind it, but its treatment by Twitter, as it was shadowbanned.

Example tweets of @YouArentBanned

Now, the bot in question doesn’t produce unique comments, it’s mainly the same structure repeated in a predictable pattern. If you didn’t know any better, you could assume it’s a spam bot to troll people (despite this it has had quite the positive reception). Based on the apparent spammy nature of the bot, as well as the fact that it was shadowbanned an hour after the script went live, the shadowbanning process had to be automated, and as a result of spam. All of those accounts who have fell victim to shadowbanning were likely seen as either bots, either to push a political agenda or to spam up one’s timeline, or were just mistakenly caught in the algorithm’s line of fire. In fact, Twitter has confirmed that it’s due to spam, according to blogger Tania (you should read the full article, located here, as it also covers shadowbans).

Additionally, it seems like it is possible to be shadowbanned on one account and not the others. This was seen mainly on the bot, with the account’s tweets being in one user’s notifications and shadowbanned on my account.

Am I Shadowbanned?

There are three ways to check if you are shadowbanned:

1. Search Twitter for from:yournamehere. If there are no results, you are shadowbanned.
2. Use a site like http://shadownban-checker.xho.bedita.net
3. Open your Twitter DMs and post “Am I shadowbanned” and @YouArentBanned should DM you and reply if you aren’t.

Additionally, just like Reddit, a shadowbanned account’s replies don’t show up, but increment the comments counter. Be wary though, as this is also the case for private accounts.

Now, how do I fix shadowbans?

Most other kinds of bans have a way to get your account restored to normal, whether that involves being paitent or challenging the ban. However, shadowbans seem to be a mystery with mixed solutions. The most valuable insight on how to recover from a shadowban once again comes from Tania:

Milly found that by contacting the Twitter Ads team and suggesting that she wanted to place an ad, but her hashtags weren’t working resulted in her Twitter shadowban being lifted. This was done within two hours of contacting the Twitter Ads team.

While I’d set up a new account, I knew I had to try in the hope I could get my original Twitter account back. I’d worked so hard to create my community. Low and behold, within 2 hours of contacting the Ads team, my Twitter shadowban had been lifted (and I didn’t have to buy any ads, only enquire about them).

In summary, it was suggested to either request to place an ad, or submit a verification request, to restore her tweet’s visibility. However, after just a few hours after Tania published her blog post on how to circumvent (to some extent) shadowbans, Twitter caught on, and started turning people down. Additionally, some of people’s previously remedied shadowbans were reenacted. However, there seems to be light at the end of the tunnel. By just changing her tweeting habits, Tania was able to un-shadowban her account after a few days:

I canceled all promotional blog tweets and just used Twitter for sharing daily life bits and bobs without hashtags. After 48–72 hours (because I don’t know when I was hit by the shadow ban) it was lifted. I’m not going to apply the 70:30 ratio, with only 30% of my tweets being blog promotion.

Conclusion

So are shadowbans real or a myth, and can you resolve them? Well they are real, but they usually involve you seemingly being a bot to advertise, sway opinions, or just to annoy other users. Can they be resolved? Possibly, but it seems to be far from consistent.

Edit Log:

• Edited on 19/7/17 to correct some mistakes, especially in regards to sensitive content, comment count incrementation, and shadowbans varying for different users.
• Edited on 19/7/17 to clear up something in the Filtration section. Also added an edit log.

I was just browsing Reddit as I always do and when I read this I immediately thought of BPM and my other projects that depend on custom stylesheets (like my spoiler solution I did some time back). A tl;dr is that Reddit plans on replacing the CSS with something more user-friendly. Seems good, right? Nope, because this means the death to CSS theming.

CSS theming is done on nearly every big sub. All the default subs do it, and even smaller subs like the ones I moderate. It allows for stuff like inline spoilers, content filtering, night modes, and emotes.

Now with this change, that begs the question: what will happen with BPM?

First, I think it will be ported to work on the native solution provided by Reddit as long as it’s good. However, this isn’t known for sure, as nobody but the admins know how this new system works. Will it use JSON? Converting to CSS? Something else? We don’t know. Next, I believe that some major revamps might be needed. Especially that the DOM will be changed, some of the code might need adjustments. Additionally, the generation scripts (used to help compile BPM) will need to be rewritten to work with this mysterious solution. Is this certain? No. However, we can only speculate.

I think it’s safe to say that BPM will survive, but we’ll just have to wait and see…

I use iOS as my daily driver. While iOS is usually nice, it does have its limitations that, while it makes the OS safer, hinders flexibility. One of these is modifying other apps, which is crucial to something like a port of dinsfire’s Ponymotes app on Android to iOS. For those who don’t know, (Better)Ponymotes is a series (because of the many ports, like the Discord and Android one) of apps that let you use custom Reddit emotes throughout Reddit, and on other sites like Discord. So if we can’t modify files outside of an app (since iOS sandboxes them), how else can this be done?

That’s when Jailbreaking comes in.

I have jailbroke most of my devices since the days of iOS 5. It’s usually good, but there can be a few problems (which have been more and more of a factor nowaways):

1. It voids your warantee. Well, it does if you let Apple know you are jailbroken. But in case of a breakage, they could technically deny you service (even though they don’t really) if you are Jailbroken. Plus, restoring your device makes the JB nearly undetectable. But besides these points, they are worth considering because of the end user.
2. It’s not always stable. Since Apple is cracking down on exploits used in jailbreaks, that requires more creativity to make the exploits. This creativity could lead to instability in the OS. A prime example is Luca’s new YaluX Jailbreak, which (in earlier forms) broke cellular signal. As time goes on and on, Jailbreaking could possibly be dangerous. Hell, MachPortal (which is powering YaluX) likes to force-shutdown devices, which can overheat the battery after a couple consecutive runs (it did for me).
3. There is no Jailbreak for many devices. This is the biggest issue of jailbreaking: they aren’t as common as they used to be. More bugs are being sold to governments and some are being sold to companies like Apple, making supporting a Jailbreak seem like a waste of what could be thousands of dollars (millions, even, if you sell them to governments and companies that governments buy exploits from).

Let’s say that Jailbreaking is out of the equation. There are some other options we have:

1. Custom Keyboard. I have played around in this department. I’d say we could even do it. However, it’s only useful if the app could also display emotes in comments (which keyboards can’t do).
2. iMessage Apps. Also entirely feasible, we could make BPM on iOS in the form of a sticker pack. Have it download the emote assests from a server and display when searching. However, I want to support Reddit, not an entire new platform.
3. Sideloading. Sideloading apps in iOS is a relatively old concept, but recently became available to the masses in iOS 9. This allows us to install custom apps to our device for a week, for free (and for a year with Apple’s Developer program). We could then modify the base code of a Reddit client and get it working. Or with Alien Blue, add them into the application package (which breaks commenting, sadly, as there’s 15k assets for the included emote viewer). This is the best option, but weekly reinstalls aren’t optimal. This leads to #4.
4. An entirely new Reddit client, or fork and existing one. We could make a new Reddit app and put it on iTunes for public download. It just means no more Narwhal…

So what does this mean?

It means that, yes, a port to BPM may be possible. However, it would be no easy task, and would require some cooperation from the end user. If you possibly want to take this on, feel free. I think there’s some failed attempts on my GitHub (like this one that uses Anemone) and there’s another on e I didn’t publish that tried to make a static sticker pack using a script (that would take way too long to compile, as there’s so many assets).

Now to try to work on BPM for Chrome…