Oh please. Apple, and most of big tech is extremely socially liberal, and easy to implement or not there was no need to spend time implementing it except to cater to the trans community.
If ease of implementation was the sole driving factor then why are all the handshake emojis skin tones that actually exist, stands to reason it would be just as easy to flip some color codes and have every possible skin tone from green to orange shaking hands. Where's my alien-shaking-hands-with-oompa-loompa emoji dammit?
I personally don't care, and Apple is more than welcome to promote whatever messages they want on their private platform. But let's not pretend it's apolitical.
I'd rather say that corporations are amoral, not political. They are only seemingly political to the degree that it benefits the business the most. On a broader scale, you can observe that they behave differently in different regions, and behavior also differs on a larger time scale, often molding to the current times.
It should be there, because it enables expression just like all other emoji. It would have been a deliberate, discriminatory choice to not include it. If someone doesn't like that emoji, guess what: They don't have to use it!
The whole point of Unicode and emoji in Unicode is to support and enable free expression for the whole world. It makes sense to lean inclusive.
If ease of implementation was the sole driving factor then why are all the handshake emojis skin tones that actually exist, stands to reason it would be just as easy to flip some color codes and have every possible skin tone from green to orange shaking hands. Where's my alien-shaking-hands-with-oompa-loompa emoji dammit?
I personally don't care, and Apple is more than welcome to promote whatever messages they want on their private platform. But let's not pretend it's apolitical.