Google's Obedience to Trump's "Lake America" Order Follows a Depressing Pattern

40 pointsposted 10 hours ago
by cdrnsf
(motherjones.com)

16 Comments

jayknight

10 hours ago

Here is a thread about how OpenStreetMaps handled it: https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/lake-ontario-lake-amer...

>So far, the Lake Ontario relation (1206310) as well as at least one other nearby feature has already had its name=* changed once, though it was swiftly reverted and changed to official_name:en-US=* instead, which is the current status quo as of this writing.

anigbrowl

10 hours ago

After he's gone we're going to see endless blog posts of the form 'Standing up to those guys inside company X' from execs trying to rehab themselves for rushing to comply with every stupid directive to come out of the White House.

tingletech

10 hours ago

I wish there were a toggle on google maps to show the internationally accepted names for these bodies of water.

tekla

9 hours ago

There won't be because such a thing does not exist. I do not understand why people think that anyone controls what a body of water is called by individual countries.

Marsymars

9 hours ago

Yeah, but in the same vein, a) countries are just a collection of people and b) Google's a private company, they can put whatever labels they want on their maps.

If the US admin decided to officially rename every road in the country to "America Street" and every lake in the world to "Lake America", everyone, including Google, would ignore that.

pvaldes

9 hours ago

Can't wait for the Canadians trolling back by declaring that they will rename Florida to "Punkeydoodles two" and the Fifth avenue to "Woodchuck street" in each official map printed in Canada.

user

8 hours ago

[deleted]

gipp

10 hours ago

As dumb as the renaming is to begin with, it feels like making this your hill to die on would also be pretty dumb, no? It's fairly inconsequential in the end.

behole

9 hours ago

Who’s dying on this hill? This “just let this go cause it’s inconsequential” attitude is exactly the attrition that emboldens and underpins the current shift towards facsism. Death of a thousand cuts.

pennomi

9 hours ago

Opposing imperialistic rhetoric is a dumb hill to die on? If a person does not oppose fascist language, I have no faith that they will oppose fascist actions.

wat10000

9 hours ago

If it’s inconsequential then why not ignore it and stick with the real name?

jeffbee

8 hours ago

Because their whole system relies on national registries of place names, and the US national registry of place names renamed this place.

wat10000

7 hours ago

There’s no way it relies on them. Google Maps wouldn’t go down if the register got pulled. They have made a policy decision to follow those registries.