Ok so it’s 100% a browser thing. It has been fixed now, but I’m still curious if anyone has insight.
He was using Chrome with tampermonkey+ublock origin. I can confirm it’s none of these because I also have all three installed and specifically using that browser (with combo) when I impersonated his account (I usually run Brave).
He tried it in Edge and it immediately worked, and he uses Kiwi browser on his phone which also has always worked.
He said he “changed the colors and also unistalled/reinstalled extensions” and now it works on his normal Chrome install.
So my guess is it has something to do with how he had a different emoji tone pallet (which I’m not sure how) as you see compared to mine, and by having a tone that “doesn’t exist” selected it…just think it can’t make it, so it doesn’t generate the code? This has seemingly only affected one person (or no one else cared enough to mention it) in a very specific circumstance, but I’d be interested to know…why