But what if they could?

The issue here isn’t that Google got the name wrong, but that they actively chose a new one and could change it to the new one because the public depends on a private entity’s map system and that private entity is able to manipulate the representation in their own private interest.

>If< I didn’t like you and I were able to change your name on every non-public record to “Fucking Idiot” (Job applications, Facebook, Twitter, GMail, etc.), maybe you wouldn’t mind that. Or maybe you would mind it and I convinced you to not mind it by explaining how it wouldn’t effect your government records. (I doubt the residents in question mind the name “The East Cut” either, but they already had one and preferred it. In many of these name changes, the effects can mean rapid mass development, raised rents and evictions, etc.) For you, this name change would mean at least a lot of explaining how this obnoxious poster on Hacker News was trying to make some disparate point but it has nothing to do with your qualification for the job, getting your account banned from Social media sites. You could start a new one but you’d lose all your posts and followers. At the end of the day, you should probably have been able to stop me, but you couldn’t.