We have a practical case of #Unicode encoding of country flags causing problems.
To recap, flags are encoded as sequences of codepoints corresponding to letters in the country's ISO code (so, Polish flag is <flag-p> <flag-l>). There is no heed paid to their mutability over time.
The Syrian flag will at some point start being rendered differently. Then, all the previous statements about Assad's government that used the flag will start rendering as if they were about the rebels.
I'm sad at Unicode's failures to fully and immutably encode the meaning of whoever wrote the text (see Han unification for counterexample to "fully").
@robryk if you are referring to a specific version of a flag, then it's best to use an image. Flag emojis can change overtime.
@enablelanguages I think that people would not consider e.g. the current German flag and Nazi German flag to be different versions of the same flag.
