They can be pretty close sometimes, but I don't think it's enough to be semantic. It's a distinction worth keeping.
0_0 does need clean up though. I've seen some people use them simply for irises that are ovular, not when the eye itself is actually an empty or filled in oval, and a lot that are just plain circles instead of ovals (post #938934)
I think the current definitions for 0_0 and o_o may need some tweaking.
0_0 says, "an elongated version of o_o. It substitutes the eyes with white circles".
o_o says, "If the circles are filled in, use solid_circle_eyesinstead" (emphasis mine).
1. 0_0 should probably say "ovals" instead of "circles". 2. I expected there to be a corresponding solid_oval_eyes tag for 0_0, but there isn't one. Should we make one? 3. The solid_circle_eyes definition should be updated to mention the the distinction between it and o_o. 4. Lots of posts seem to be incorrectly tagged with both o_o or 0_0 and solid_circle_eyes. Rampardos example post #1123521 is one such example. The characters have filled in oval eyes, but has the tags 0_0 and solid_circle_eyes. The post seems like one where you would instead use the proposed solid_oval_eyes tag. 5. What tags should we use for cases like post #1122024 or post #455910, where the character has oval eyes that are wide instead of tall? The proposed solid_oval_eyes tag should potentially be called solid_tall_oval_eyes if we wanted it to directly correspond with 0_0.