Although I haven’t much thought through the details, I wonder if these disputed names could be subject to user preference. Basically, a pre-MAGA and MAGA setting.
At the end of the day a map provider has the responsibility to show the official names of places on a map. If it’s one name to the US and another name for the rest of the world, the pragmatic solution is to show the “right” name based on a user’s location.
This seems like a silly hill to die on, when whoever is in office next will likely revert the names of the lake and the Gulf of Mexico, unless they are deep in the Trump camp.
Messing with maps as a negotiation tactic seems rather boneheaded. It’s extremely disruptive, but blaming Google or Apple for any of this is a bad move, imo. There are much bigger fights to be had and they need to pick their battles. This isn’t it, and it will likely resolve itself in time, and should only impact those in the US, if done right.
They have the capacity to push back, instead of pre-emptively rolling over for an autocrat.
When it’s only one thing, you might say everyone just knows, but that doesn’t scale.
And like I mentioned, they need to pick their battles. I’d rather them save their politics and favors for things like encryption and privacy, not piss it away on map data, when they can show both names and this will likely be a small footnote in history. In 20 years I can imagine, “What was the name of Lake Ontario for a brief period in the mid 2020s?” Being a question asked at bar trivia.
Not really. They have the responsibility to show the useful names. They are also free to show whatever the local bully forces them to.
Neither of those is necessarily the official name.
I’m not sure what the problem is.
That makes them only useful as windsocks, and there are other far better ways to see which way the wind is blowing.
Lets not cross the streams just because it would be convenient this time... next time it may well not be.
A core principle of authoritarianism is to get people, corporations, and institutions to yield to the despot's — comply in advance, retell the despot's lies, applaud the despot's ridiculous new clothes.
Anything not doing that provides permission for others to also refuse.
The entire principle of authoritarianism is it is too costly for a small number of people to resist, so the activation energy never happens. That is why they swat down one "bee" so hard, because if a million "bees" get together, they are done.
Supporting any person or corporation who resists is legit, as is refusing to support those who comply.
And the idea that corporations are only responsible for "shareholder value" and have zero responsibility to the people or society which literally sustains them is BS; just a mantra to justify running corporations like sociopaths.
But now large tech companies in America can't even challenge the naming of a Lake and just folded, meekly.
So, companies can easily pay Trump for favors with out any consequences, but they just need to keep the money train going and kowtow to Trump's insane whims.
At first they were saying it's just Trump, they get it
As it has carried on and on conversations have veered into "the people of that country are not reliable and intelligent global partners or the American system truly is a dystopian mess"
Build and trade amongst yourselves instead of relying on this house of cards. Buy European. Buy Canadian.
Should a rendering of the land bordering the Southwest corner of the Black Sea show the city of Istanbul? Or must it remain depicted as Constantinople? Or perhaps even Byzantium?
Is it legally one lake with two names, or two lakes with one name?
What should customers in neither country see displayed? What if the federal government renames New Mexico to New America, but the state government refuses?
Also, I was curious, so I looked it up: Congress passed a law (Public Law 80-242) in 1947 that allowed the executive branch to establish a single set of geographic names.
Conservatives famously protested when the Obama administration renamed Mt. McKinley to Denali. I have no doubt that when a Democratic administration returns to power, they will rename a bunch of stuff, now that the precedence is set.
My guess is we're going to go through a ping-pong of renames before the law gets changed to require some kind of independent group, or a super-majority of senators or something.
They could have done the same right? They probably even have a team specifically for evading the law
k310•1h ago
And why not? Their CEO's are foldable as well.
"Don't be Evil"
Folded.
So here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. Here’s to you.
Folded