Why are smileys counted as "images" in posts?

[Massimo Gnerucci]

(07-26-2020 05:06 PM)BruceH Wrote:  I was going to suggest using Unicode emoji instead. But - bizarrely - although you can successfully create and preview a message containing them, they display as '?' in the actual post.

(Maybe that's for the best!)

Yes, already tried it in the past, and obviously found your same result.
Is MyBB Unicode enabled?