The Emoji Challenge: Decoding Digital Intent in Compliance Supervision

By Harriet Christie, chief operating officer, MirrorWeb

Emojis. Once a playful sentence garnish for messages between friends, they’ve now infiltrated business communications, from Slack to Teams, SMS, and even emails. And while they may seem harmless, they’re a growing compliance risk that most firms aren’t equipped to handle.

In regulated industries, every piece of communication – every “thumbs up” 👍, every “fire” 🔥, even the occasional “crying laughing” 😂 is now under compliance scrutiny. Regulators are aware that these tiny symbols can carry big implications. Their challenge is understanding what’s being said when a single emoji can mean different things depending on the context, the sender, and even the recipient’s mood. Compliance teams can no longer afford to handle digital shorthand in a world where intent matters.

🚦 Why Compliance Teams Can’t Ignore Emojis Anymore

For years, compliance teams have focused on text-based communications, but in 2025, the way we communicate at work has shifted. Conversations happen in short, snappy messages, often sprinkled with emojis. Regulators have taken notice.

• Harassment and misconduct risks: A winking face 😉 or suggestive emoji can blur the lines between friendly and inappropriate. Compliance teams need to ensure workplace culture doesn’t cross into problematic territory.
• Market manipulation concerns: Traders dropping 🚀 and 🌕 might just be enthusiastic, or they could be subtly hyping up stocks to mislead investors. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has addressed the use of these emojis in securities law violations, discussing how they can be scrutinized in a legal context.
• FINRA and the SEC are watching: A former SEC official shared that a New York judge ruled a company offered investment advice using emojis on Twitter. And this was back in 2023! This legal precedent, which occurred before Twitter became X, set a significant marker for how regulators view emojis in the context of financial advice. Emojis, in this case, could be interpreted as an offering of advice, leading to potential violations of regulations, such as those under FINRA Rule 2210, which governs communications with the public.
• Contract dispute over a ‘thumbs-up’ emoji: In a Canadian case in June 2023, a farmer’s use of a “thumbs-up” emoji in a text message was deemed a binding acceptance of a contract, resulting in a judgment of $82,000 for breach of contract.

Overlooking emojis as ornamental message dressing is over. Like a skilled boxer in silk gloves, emojis land an emphatic punch, and compliance teams that ignore them do so at their own peril.

🤷‍♂️ The Problem? Emojis Are Subjective

The real challenge isn’t just tracking emoji usage. It’s understanding what they actually mean.

• Context is king: A “fire” emoji (🔥) could mean “great job” in a team chat, but in a finance setting, it might hint at something way riskier.
• Generational and cultural differences: That skull emoji (💀) your junior colleague just sent? They’re probably embarrassed, not signaling the end of the market as we know it.
• Multiple meanings: A simple checkmark (✔️) could mean “approved” or “seen,” but does it imply agreement? That’s up for debate, and misinterpretation could be catastrophic.

For compliance teams, manually decoding emojis across thousands – sometimes millions – of messages isn’t just difficult. It’s unfeasible.

📱 AND YET – For Generation Z, Emojis May Actually Be the Solution

A recent survey from software development company Atlassian found that more than a third of global respondents waste 40-plus hours per year figuring out unclear workplace communication. That’s more than an entire workweek.

The report suggests that adding more emotion to written communication could be the key to improving productivity. Teams that incorporate emotional expression into their messages and daily interactions are three times more likely to be “highly productive.”

• Sixty-five percent of surveyed employees use them to enhance emotional clarity.
• Seventy-eight percent are more likely to open or read emails or chat messages that include emojis.
• Eighty-eight percent of Gen Z workers found emojis useful compared to just 49% of boomers.

Emojis are a double-edged sword, helping and entertaining some while impeding and irritating others.

💡 Best Practices for Emoji Compliance

Your employees are going to use emojis – the shortcut is ingrained into their everyday lives – so rather than trying to ban them, it’s better to set some ground rules:

🚫 Define what’s off-limits. Some emojis have clear compliance risks. Make it clear to your team what’s acceptable in a professional setting.

📚 Train employees to use emojis responsibly. Ensure your teams understand that emojis, like any other form of communication, can be misinterpreted.

📊 Use tech to eliminate guesswork. Modern communications supervision solutions remove the ambiguity from monitoring emojis, so compliance teams can focus on the risks that really matter.

🤖 Leveraging Technology for Smarter Emoji Compliance Monitoring

Understanding and monitoring emoji use at scale requires advanced technology. Modern communications supervision solutions can help by:

• Providing maximum context: Rather than flagging emojis in isolation, the right technology can present them in a fully threaded conversation, providing all the information to interpret intent accurately.
• Tracking engagement, chronologically: The best solutions don’t just capture emojis that form part of a message, but also in the form of ‘reactions,’ presenting a complete record of engagement with/from the message’s recipients. Conversation is a two-way street, after all.
• Aligning with evolving regulations: As regulatory expectations change, solutions can adapt to ensure ongoing compliance with industry standards – by capturing emojis and GIFs, and other digital shorthand.

Organizations that embrace technology-driven compliance strategies can better navigate the complexities of digital communication while maintaining efficiency and employee morale.

🔮 Emoji-onal Intelligence: Using Emojis to Your Advantage

The rise of emojis in professional settings underscores the evolving nature of workplace communication. As regulators continue to recognize their impact, compliance teams must adapt their strategies to keep pace.

Rather than struggling with manual oversight, organizations can leverage compliance technology to interpret and flag digital intent with accuracy and efficiency, while providing maximum contextual insight.

By proactively addressing these challenges, businesses can ensure they remain compliant while fostering a streamlined, modern communications culture – one in which boomers and Gen Z employees can interact compliantly and coexist peacefully!

Harriet Christie is chief operating officer of MirrorWeb, a communications supervision solution based in Manchester, England. She graduated from the University of Sheffield in 2010. Christie entered the tourism space at LateRooms.com, earning the title of global accounts manager within three years. In 2018, she began working as a key account manager with MirrorWeb and was appointed COO in 2020. Christie has overseen MirrorWeb’s impressive growth activities ever since, with the business raising $63 million of growth capital from Mainsail Partners in 2024.

The views and opinions expressed in the preceding article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of AltsWire.

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