I had the same problem with lemmy.one shutting down. I’ve been exploring around and am currently trying feddit.online, because it isn’t lemmy based. So far I’m liking it, but Piefed just got a proper API for apps and the first app launched yesterday, so we’ll see how it goes.
A region check might be a good way to handle it and load balance at the same time. Pushing people to a larger variety of instances while also making it easy on them. The down side is certainly the overhead of vetting and maintaining the list.
This is them, to the best of their ability, complying with UK law. If more people tried to comply, perhaps the UK government would realize how foolish their Online Safety Act is and do something about it.
The emoji thing is built into the keyboard, but it doesn’t do like on-device generation or anything. They just have a list of pre-made(maybe AI generated) combos. I’m guessing they are AI generating them, then having humans approve it, before including it in the keyboard emoji list. It’s kinda neat, in that it expands the options, but really not much. Overall the OS really feels the same. I haven’t looked forward to an Android update in many years.
Also, as someone who doesn’t use Google’s launcher or keyboard, yeah, I get almost none of these features.