Why do Rust release notes contain the 🌈 symbol? [Formerly titled: Why is this happening?]

community
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why does rust use the "rainbow" flag in every release of its software on bluesky media and twitter (x) ??? what does this mean ?

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The project occasionally switches up the logo used in different circumstances, though for all I see it's been using the black-and-white version in pretty much all recent communciation.

It's a good logo and still recognizable in different colors. So why not?

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i am just trying to understand why, some people comment under the posts and say this is "pride" or transes pride or what ever i just wanted to understand i am just confused what that rainbow flag used by the rust x account and bluesky means

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1 Like
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is this what the flag used by the rust accounts like bluesky and x means ? or the flag used by rust has a different meaning ?

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i understand but i see the official accounts not sure if they are used by rust or fans or whatever i saw it here rust-lang.org so i was curious

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Maybe the rainbow flag is just to show respect to the refraction of light...

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maybe but it makes skeptical

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Unless I’m totally overlooking anything, this whole thread is responsing to a question based on a seemingly false premise.

This is absolutely not true, as far as I can tell. If there is any truth to this, someone should probably include a link of what exactly we are referring to.

Given the false premise(s), I’d consider any deeper follow-on discussion about the meaning of various rainbow flags, and social general commentary, particularly clearly off-topic for this forum. I will go ahead and mark some replies off-topic. (Especially all replies relating to point #1 below.)

Looking into it in some more detail…

#1 False source in replies

One reply in this thread brings up a profile picture of what I can only find as a satire and/or bait account with a total of 9 “high quality” posts, such as “rewrite your mom in rust”. I can only encourage everyone to engage a minimal amount of common sense before believing in such an account to be possibly “official”, even if it calls itself “rust-official.”[1]

#2 Where to look instead

To find official social media presense, go to rust-lang.org, and scroll down; for bluesky, this links to https://bsky.app/profile/rust-lang.org

The former, now inactive Twitter (nowadays “X”) account is https://[twitter|x].com/rustlang.[2]

I would assume OP has not necessarily made that same mistake though, given their explicit mention of release notes… however, the way of formulating the question is very inaccurate nevertheless:

#3 Inaccurate base of discussion

why does rust use the "rainbow" flag in every release of its software on bluesky media and twitter

  1. I cannot find a single usage of a rainbow flag emoji on either account. I can find a handful of usages of a rainbow emoji. That’s :rainbow: – not :rainbow_flag:. It is a rainbow. It comes in the shape of a rainbow. The same unicode symbol on some other platforms would even display with some haze, or sky, or clouds added. It is not a flag.

    According to online sources (emojipedia, for instance), a rainbow emoji, among other things, can well be used simply to express “happiness”.

  2. Furthermore, it is also not used on every release post.

    Going through the most recent release posts, we can see various decorative emoji usage:

    (click here to expand an in-depth listing; I’ve collapsed this by-default, as it has turned out rather lengthy)

    --- switching between Twitter, and Bluesky (+Mastodon) ---

    From the above listing, we can see there is some usage of “:rainbow:”, in particular the latest full release on Bluesky uses the emoji (but no other release on there), as well as a section of releases between 1.76 and 1.80 on Twitter (nowadays “X”) makes more consistent use of it, and some more occasional usage happened up to 1.85.

I feel like the main intended meaning of including a “:rainbow:” is no less neutral and celebratory than the (also common) inclusion of e.g. “:sparkles:”, to further illustrate general happiness. It also shows quite clearly that the general post structure of these announcement posts is simply commonly recycled; the abovementioned period of more consistent repeated appearance of “:rainbow:” is most likely nothing more special than a period of less creativity spent with coming up with new variations to make these tweets more interesting.

  1. The full profile name of this fake account is rust-official.bsky.social – I will not set a link as to not possibly further boost their search rankings. ↩︎

  2. You can confirm this for instance by viewing an older, archived version of the rust-lang.org homepage. ↩︎

  3. https://bsky.app/profile/rust-lang.org/post/3m5ch7kcdpc2k ↩︎

  4. https://bsky.app/profile/rust-lang.org/post/3m4grzume3k2d ↩︎

  5. https://bsky.app/profile/rust-lang.org/post/3lz52zlglcc2n ↩︎

  6. https://bsky.app/profile/rust-lang.org/post/3lvsmjrcra226 ↩︎

  7. https://bsky.app/profile/rust-lang.org/post/3lslhtfjgps2s ↩︎

  8. https://bsky.app/profile/rust-lang.org/post/3lm2r7wnl2s22 ↩︎ ↩︎

  9. https://x.com/rustlang/status/1907734792784826671?s=20 ↩︎ ↩︎

  10. https://x.com/rustlang/status/1902431115970761101?s=20 ↩︎

  11. https://x.com/rustlang/status/1892623672382251191?s=20 ↩︎

  12. https://x.com/rustlang/status/1885282545589223607?s=20 ↩︎

  13. https://x.com/rustlang/status/1877383736318103720?s=20 ↩︎

  14. https://x.com/rustlang/status/1864244334880538903?s=20 ↩︎

  15. https://x.com/rustlang/status/1847277267283534277?s=20 ↩︎

  16. https://x.com/rustlang/status/1821583144941924536?s=20 ↩︎

  17. https://x.com/rustlang/status/1831746314746405342?s=20 ↩︎

  18. https://x.com/rustlang/status/1816474622813991378?s=20 ↩︎

  19. https://x.com/rustlang/status/1801275366117347824?s=20 ↩︎

  20. https://x.com/rustlang/status/1786029306285629783?s=20 ↩︎

  21. https://x.com/rustlang/status/1777745198199554460?s=20 ↩︎

  22. https://x.com/rustlang/status/1774827524234637343?s=20 ↩︎

  23. https://x.com/rustlang/status/1770809338208161857?s=20 ↩︎

  24. https://x.com/rustlang/status/1755599856918503534?s=20 ↩︎

  25. https://x.com/rustlang/status/1740415088731754752?s=20 ↩︎

  26. https://x.com/rustlang/status/1725154590687961320?s=20 ↩︎

  27. https://x.com/rustlang/status/1709991196695646648?s=20 ↩︎

  28. https://x.com/rustlang/status/1704140148466745367?s=20 ↩︎

  29. https://x.com/rustlang/status/1694716537272451411?s=20 ↩︎

  30. https://x.com/rustlang/status/1687171691485556736?s=20 ↩︎

  31. https://x.com/rustlang/status/1679494696924479488?s=20 ↩︎

31 Likes
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I am aware of a single "official" rainbow logo, that being the official Rust Discord server. (The Rust Programming Language)

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For the Record.
I found the pic I posted Here....with a name including "rust-official"

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That matches the one I've found. To mark the relevant section in my previous reply:

Mind the quoted footnote :wink:[1]

  1. Also, in case you're wondering: I wasn't sure how to set a link myself without the potential search engine impact it might have for me at Trust Level 3 and above (no more "nofollow"), which is why I'm only describing it via the rust-official.bsky.social profile name there.

    Edited: oh my, quoting footnotes is somewhat broken on discourse apparently, I had to fake it in the text above - and thus the display style differs - in the original reply the thing is properly showing when hovered / clicked, but somehow that wouldn't work here within a quote :-/ ↩︎

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As far as I know there is no official discord. All official forums are listed on Community - Rust Programming Language and Discord isn't there.

(This also means that r/rust on reddit is not official for example.)

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i am so happy that the flag they used means happines no more i love rust

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Perhaps an administrator could adjust the subject of this thread so that visitors can better decide how to spend their precious time by clicking on relevant topics?

Thank you very much.

1 Like
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why not ? this forum is for everybody to ask and answer questions there is also the search bar i just want to understand no more

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I believe mroth was referring to the generic topic title, which doesn't really describe what this topic is about. I took the liberty to adjust the title to something I believe to be more descriptive.

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do you have an answer to the question please ?

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It was there at some point, as evidenced by https://web.archive.org/web/20230305235506/https://www.rust-lang.org/community.
It appears that all the channels on that server have been put in read-only mode with messages from staff pointing people to the RPL Community discord instead.

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yeah i see they listed the rust lang discord server and then they removed it