Comment by augusteo
The Unicode approach seems backwards in hindsight, but I wonder if it was the only practical path forward at the time. Getting Apple, Google, Samsung, and Microsoft to agree on exact pixel-level designs would've been a nightmare. Code points at least let everyone participate without vendor lock-in.
What's interesting is how the market solved it anyway—everyone just converged on Apple's designs because that's what users expected. Not through spec, but through sheer gravity.
The market hasn't solved it though, there's plenty of emoji where the difference between the Apple / Google / Samsung / Microsoft / Twemoji is divergent enough that it expresses a different sentiment.