what does this symbol mean?

Online and app symbols

Emoji, platform badges and AI labels, and what each one means.

Online and app symbols are the small pictures people meet on a screen: emoji in messages, the badges and icons on social media profiles and in chat, and the labels and icons that say AI was involved. Unicode names each emoji and each platform’s help centre explains its own icons, but a code chart doesn’t say what people now use an emoji for, and a help centre doesn’t say where another app gives the same picture a different meaning. These pages set the sources side by side and say which source gives which meaning, as the sources had it in September 2026. The three sections are Emoji meanings, Social media icons and badges and AI labels and icons.

Emoji meanings 5 symbols

What popular emoji mean, including the meanings people use them for that differ from their official names.

Social media icons and badges 5 symbols

The badges and icons on Twitch, Discord, Snapchat, Instagram and TikTok, and what each one shows.

AI labels and icons 5 symbols

The sparkle icon, content credentials and "Made with AI" labels, and what each one says about an image or feature.

Emoji used for something other than their names

Unicode’s code chart names 💀 SKULL, and Emojipedia says it commonly expresses figurative death, “dying from extreme laughter, frustration, or affection”; the skull page follows that change. The chart calls 🗿 MOYAI, a “Japanese stone statue like Moai on Easter Island”. ThePrint says Gen Alpha and Gen Z use the moai as a deadpan reaction, and that it rose from 482nd in 2021 to 33rd in 2025 in Google’s Gboard data. The Deseret News says some people have adopted the wilted flower 🥀 in place of 💔. The melting face was proposed to “convey two conflicting emotions simultaneously”, and the first proposal for the saluting face already expected “a sarcastic departure or goodbye”.

Badges that say who someone is on a platform

Twitch badges sit beside a name in chat. Twitch’s developer documentation says most have one version, while subscriber badges have one for each length of subscription. Discord badges sit on a profile, and Discord’s help centre says they cannot be moved to another account. Snap gives its own meanings to the emoji beside a friend’s name: on the Snapchat friend emoji page, a yellow heart means two people are each other’s #1 Best Friend, and a fire means a Streak.

The blue check mark on two apps

A blue check mark means a verified account on both Instagram and TikTok, and the two apps award it differently. Until February 2023, TechCrunch reported, Instagram’s check was reserved for public figures; since then Meta Verified, a subscription, has included it. TikTok’s newsroom says its badge means TikTok has confirmed the account belongs to the user it represents, and that the badge is not an endorsement.

Icons and labels for AI

The Nielsen Norman Group calls the ✨ sparkle “the de facto symbol for everything AI”, although in its research not one participant mentioned AI when shown it. The sparkle marks a feature in an app; the other four pages cover labels on content. Using the European Commission’s AI icons is optional, the Commission says. The C2PA introduced the Content Credentials pin, the letters CR, on 10 October 2023, and Meta changed its “Made with AI” label to “AI info” in July 2024.

Sources

  1. Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs, Range: 1F300–1F5FF (code chart), The Unicode Standard, Unicode Consortium, U+1F480; U+1F5FF
  2. Skull Emoji Meaning, Emojipedia emoji page, read September 2026, Emojipedia, Meaning
  3. 😭 is now the most-used emoji. Gen Z has moved on from 😂 and 🤣, Almina Khatoon, ThePrint, 19 August 2026, ThePrint, Replacement of emojis
  4. What are the most popular emojis?, Caitlin Keith, Deseret News, 13 August 2026, Deseret News, The 10 fastest-rising emojis
  5. Melting Face Proposal for Unicode 14.0, Unicode document L2/20-072 (Neil Cohn, Jennifer Daniel and Erik Carter), 10 December 2019, updated 21 February 2020, Unicode Consortium document register, cover; B.2 Multiple usages; B.3 Use in sequences; D. Completeness
  6. Proposal for Emoji: SALUTING FACE, Unicode document L2/19-400 (Jay Peters), 29 March 2019, Unicode Consortium document register, 5.B Expected usage; 5.H Already representable
  7. Chat and Chatbots: IRC concepts and tag reference, Twitch Developers documentation (read September 2026), Twitch, GLOBALUSERSTATE and PRIVMSG tags: badge-info, badges, mod, subscriber, turbo
  8. Profile Badges 101, Discord Help Center, updated 31 July 2026 (Internet Archive copy, 11 September 2026), Discord (Internet Archive copy), whole article
  9. What do my Friend Emojis mean on Snapchat?, Snapchat Support (read September 2026), Snap Inc., Friend Emoji Guide
  10. Meta to sell blue badge on Instagram and Facebook, Manish Singh, 19 February 2023, TechCrunch, article
  11. How to tell if an account is verified on TikTok, TikTok Newsroom, TikTok, article
  12. The Proliferation and Problem of the ✨ Sparkles ✨ Icon, Kate Kaplan, 20 September 2024, Nielsen Norman Group, Sparkles Are Ambiguous; Sparkles as “All Things Artificial Intelligence”
  13. EU Icons for labelling AI-generated content, European Commission, Shaping Europe’s digital future (page updated 24 September 2026), European Commission, whole page
  14. Introducing Official Content Credentials Icon, C2PA, 10 October 2023, Content Credentials (C2PA), announcement
  15. Our Approach to Labeling AI-Generated Content and Manipulated Media, Monika Bickert, 5 April 2024, updated 10 May, 1 July and 12 September 2024, Meta Newsroom, takeaways; updates of 12 September and 1 July 2024; original post

Last reviewed September 30, 2026 by Rory Hansen. How we research