UPDATED 17:18 EDT / AUGUST 19 2015

NEWS

Swiftkey emoji study proves your apps are spying on your poop jokes

The makers of the popular smartphone keyboard app Swiftkey recently released a study revealing data on the most popular emoji used in each state. Well, sort of. The data does not actually show which emoji are used the most. That would be kind of pointless since it would probably be one of the handful of standard smilies that basically everyone and their grandma uses.

Instead, Swiftkey used a convoluted and slightly pointless system that measured three different categories: top emoji per state, emoji used more in one state than in any other state, and emoji categories that were used more or less than the overall average.

As Swiftkey itself explains it, “This report represents the emoji that each state over-indexes for on two metrics – the U.S. average usage as a whole and a weighted average that treats each U.S. state’s usage as equal. These insights were combined to determine a single signature emoji for each state while ensuring no emoji was used more than once on the map.”

Like I said: convoluted, slightly pointless.

The study revealed a few trends that, aside from being “interesting” trivia, are either common sense (Texas uses the snowboarding emoji less than average) or completely meaningless (California apparently does not use any emoji more than any other state).

Whether or not emoji statistics actually interest anyone (hey, did you know Vermont uses the poop emoji more than anyone else?), the study does prove one thing: Swiftkey is keeping track of the things you type with its app. Swiftkey’s creators point out that the information it gathers comes from anonymized data from an optional cloud backup feature on the app, which it uses to improve its prediction results.

“These findings come from an analysis of one billion emoji from aggregate SwiftKey Cloud data, an opt-in service offering backup and sync of your language insights,” Swiftkey explained in its report. “This is occasionally analyzed for pertinent trends, as well as to make sure SwiftKey’s predictions are as accurate as possible.”

In other words, your privacy is as safe as a faceless corporation can make it.

You can view an interactive map of the emoji study on Swiftkey’s website, if you are into that sort of thing.

Screenshot via Swiftkey.com

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