Long story short, there's a workaround, see the phpBB support forum:
See for example this postWhile a new version that takes care of this is already in the works, you will most likely notice issues with pages taking longer to load and issues with the display of emojis
And see the HTML
Code: Select all
<img alt="😂" class="emoji smilies" draggable="false" src="//twemoji.maxcdn.com/2/svg/1f602.svg">
Afterwards go to the ACP and purge the cache.
Once the next version of phpBB is released, you should be able to simple overwrite this file again. Preparations for the next release are already underway and it will be published as soon as possible.