Stop using app icons for political activism
blog.efitz.net
blog.efitz.net
I think the more general topic of brands taking political stances is worthy of debate, for sure. I tend to think it's fine. If I agree, great. If I don't, then I can choose spend my money at a company whose values align better with mine.
Hard to imagine a minor annoyance of logo design would otherwise justify a public post. Living in a pluralistic, multi-cultural society doesn't mean excluding politics from the public sphere. It means tolerating politics in the public sphere, especially if you're ambivalent or even a little annoyed by those politics.
In this example, if it's pride symbols or the Ukrainian flag, or something else -- those will stop being political once the rights are so normalized and obvious, they no longer elicit reactions like this.
Changing your profile picture to “support” some cause has been ridiculed for years. Starving children don’t care what color your profile picture is, and it’s hypocritical to say you're a supporter when changing your profile picture is the most you’re actually willing to do, even if you have the means to give a dollar, or 5 minutes of your time, you choose not to. It’s hypocritical, and pretty selfish imo.
Or the idea that we all need to public state our beliefs at all times and ideologically walk around with flags on our forehead of every cause we are for. App Icons are in support of the idea that we all need to public state our beliefs at all times. There’s been growing backlash against that. I think people find it annoying anti social behavior.
Anti Virtue signaling as a topic has been growing tremendously over the past 10 years.
It's definitely been growing as a dog-whistling tactic. It's not like people don't notice that those who complain about "virtue signaling" tend to be very particular about what virtues they hate anyone supporting.
I genuinely think more people would be fine with that for the sorts of causes that come to mind.
I think people respect action but find virtue signalling without action annoying.
I actually disagree. There are lots of inputs my brain is using other than the specific logo when I'm quickly moving through my phone looking for a specific app, and this could totally throw me off. Often times I think to save energy my brain looks for a "low-rez" abstraction of what I'm looking for rather than one that is in full detail. That being said, with everyone requiring an app these days my phone is so overloaded I just search for everything.
Granted, I don't thing the original posters concerns have as much to do with accessibility, and if it takes me a little longer to find an app, so be it.
This idea became mainstream at some point, and the result is that we must now signal what team we're on in everything we create. Abstaining from this signaling just means you're either ignorant of the causes (best assumption) or you're on the other team (worst assumption).
For example people don’t choose to be gay, it just happens like being tall or having blue eyes. But in Florida there is a law now saying teachers can’t talk about gay people in school. Totally still fine to talk about tall people, though.
This is why “Pride Month” is a big deal but tall people month is not. Gay people didn’t choose to become “political.” But since they are subjected to that scrutiny, they of course want to stand up for themselves, and other people who value equality under the law want to stand up with them.
If only you weren't misrepresenting the Parental Rights in Education bill[1] you'd have a point. There's no reason why a teacher needs to discuss sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, etc. with kindergartens, be that heterosexual or homosexual. That's a private matter that has no place in a classroom, less so in primary grade levels.
While I agree that kindergartners may be too young to receive sexual education, I disagree that sex, sexual orientation , gender identities have no a place in the classroom. At least starting in Middle School it’s important to educate children on the realities of the world they are going to see that will include all of these things. I can at least point to Health and History as two subjects that these topics will be relevant in.
This is one reason why the Florida bill was opposed by pediatricians, child psychologists, and teachers. The professionals whose job it is know how children develop are aligned against the bill because it goes against quite a lot of research about to help children develop emotionally.
Orientation and gender are attributes that children naturally observe in others and in themselves, even at a young age, and ask their teachers about. Denying them answers helps them not at all, but is useful for stigmatizing the subjects (which is of course the point of the bill).
I noticed you also mentioned “sex” as well, but that is a red herring because no school system in Florida, or anywhere in the U.S. actually, starts sex education before middle school.
Edit: actually if you’re up for a serious discussion, you mention gender identity shouldn’t be a topic in primary school. Sometimes I wonder if we have a shared meaning on the terms “gender identity” because I would love to send my kid to a primary school where gender identity isn’t discussed, but the idea is ludicrous, not because of its immorality, but it’s impossibility. gender is one of the most discriminating social institutions we have. Everything about the way our society is organized is designed to socialize Kids into a traditional gender identity, hell months before being born parents throw gender reveal parties to determine if a kid should like pink or blue, so what would this even look like? Same thing with sexual orientation by the way given the prevalence of prince winning over princess stories in childrens media.
What happens when a student has two dads or two moms?
Homosexuality isn't some abstract idea. Gays have kids and nephews and nieces.
The same goes for all those other topics. There are developmentally appropriate ways of talking about most of them.
How do you explain the use of English personal pronouns without referencing sex or gender identity? I mean, I know the that the right is perfomatively “anti-pronoun”, but unless they've decided to exclude them entirely from education...
The same issue exists with traditional honorifics (Mr./Mrs./Miss/etc.); with those you can probably get away with “it was what it is” for specific individuals as a baseline, but are teachers really expect to defer questions about them till later grades?
(It's also very hard to to discuss anything about families, actual or fictional, without, in fact, talking about sexual orientation, and while the bill is superficially written neutrally, it's very clear that the intent is to resolve all these issues of perfectly common childhood things that would become impossible to discuss if it were enforced as written by simply by ignoring then as long as the orientations and identities at issue are heterosexual and cisgender.)
I can say, speaking from experience, that insufferable political advertising has the effect of making people who had no objection to your existence previously gradually start despising you.
Isn't the best revenge, as always, to live well and normal? Maybe save your moral grandstanding to the next one who says your existence is a sin, and not the user who wants to get shit done?
It didn't work. The police came and attacked them anyway. Now we march and get in your face so you'll notice when someone tries to get rid of us.
I didn't mix up the order of the two :
>>some people reject your existence, and in response you politicise your whole existence
is saying the same thing as
>Refusing to be quiet about who they are is a response to people trying to erase them, both culturally and violently.
>The first one was a riot kicked off by cops invading a space that was exactly as quiet as you would have preferred. Now we march and get in your face so you'll notice when someone tries to get rid of us.
So you mean to say that the identity obsession lgbt people seem to have is just a bizarre distress mechanism so that people constantly notice them and come to their help if somebody tries to be violent with them ? Can this possibly backfire when your presence become so invasive and annoying that you flip me from the [not caring whether you exist or not] state to the [actively wishing you don't exist] state ? Can you not see how a lot of people in the second state would bring about the very outcome you fear ?
Does your culture tell the story of The Boy Who Cried Wolf ?
Pride is about making you aware of this. The threat is real, and it's here. Now. There's a volley of legislative attacks on people like me at this very moment right here in the US. It follows a brief lull after a string of attacks on access to public life.
You assert this, then you proceed to describe the events of more than 75 years ago. Where exactly, in the countries you're allowed to hold pride parades today, are the nazis who want you in camps and prisons ? and how is obnoxiosly parading in the streets while wearing half-naked customs preventing those nazis from achieving what they want ?
If you mean by the nazis the countries that still imprison and persecute lgbt people today, how is holding pride parades outside their borders putting pressure on them ? if anything, it's even more justification for their actions ("See what these people do when they win ? Do not let them win at all costs").
Do you have any reason to believe that holding pride parades significantly, and positvely, affect the state of lgbt people anywhere ?
>There's a volley of legislative attacks on people like me at this very moment right here in the US
Is this another deadend conversation about how parents not wanting their children to hear about your sex life an attack on you ? Because it's not, and if you're going to argue otherwise then let us please end the conversation right here. Because I'm tired of explaining to lgbt folks that lack of visibility won't kill them, and that people have the choice not to accept your identity let alone to teach it to their children.
You're only owed 1 thing : Tolerance. The only obligation society has toward you when it comes to your identity is to not kill, imprison or otherwise materially harm you because of it, provided it doesn't involve breaking any laws. Society is not obligated to praise your identity. Society is not obligated to teach your identity to children. Society is not obligated to force people to let you in their life or into their businesses or into their children's public school curricula.
If you can't agree to that, then you don't respect people's choices and therefore yours don't deserve to be respected as well.
No.
Courts have routinely disagreed with you here.
Gay bashings, murders, and targeted arrests are more recent examples. Then there’s the millions who died of AIDS while authorities twiddled their thumbs. And to top it off, throw in the social ostracism, the chance of being outed at work (fired), and a sky high suicide rate for a clearer picture.
So, no. The community has not faced any literal Nazis in the past 75 years. But, they have faced just about everything short of that.
This is not far off history. This has all occurred in my lifetime. Some of it still goes on today. Pulse Nightclub was just five years ago.
Have some compassion.
"Wow, you must think working people don't have a right to exist" "I bet you support serfdom and slavery" "How could you say such a thing on May Day?"
When it comes from a multi billion dollar giant it's still annoying but more understandable that a giant organisation with thousands of people will have a lot going in it.
But when a dude behind a $2.95 "NFT chat bot for your grandma's crypto portfolio" app wants to do it, it's something else.
They need to find another avenue to express their political ideas rather than letting it bleed into an unrelated product.
There's something to be said about having some tact and knowing your place and where you stand. If you ship a little flashlight app on Android understand that you don't have that kind of room to attach political commentary and activisim next to it. The best thing you can do is to just be the little reliable unchanging app on someone's phone and not try to over reach.
If you have to virtue signal, there are better ways to do it than changing the icon.
But time and time again we've seen that the market as a whole will go for whatever has the lowest friction. That's the singular most important factor. Whatever lets people do that thing quickest and easiest will usually win out.
So any serious and realistic discussion has to keep that in mind. This is why consumer protection laws are important. Because "people" aren't going to necessarily look out for their own long term best interests. And will choose the option that is easy today but will screw you down the road.
Consumer protection laws are not only important even for those who don't care about them. They are important specially because there are so many people who don't care about them.
It feels similar to these YouTube personalities who film themselves giving money to the homeless and that’s not a coincidence; it “feels” that way because the motive is the same: virtue-signalling.
If you want to support a political cause, donate $$$ towards it and don’t even tell me about it. Changing a homescreen logo provides dubious value to the cause (especially to an already well-known one) in comparison.
Using a free(er) platform like Android (compared to iOS) affords me this opportunity for customization.
If it's my app, I'll use my logo. I consider the logo an integral part of the application's identity and I should control its identity. I promise I'll do my best to make it easily and readily recognizable, regardless of it using national colors, a rainbow or shades of white, pink and blue. If you don't like it, it's your problem, not mine.
The choice is simple, if you don't like it, just stop using the app. There are probably tons of alternatives.
However, there is a license, and this goes both ways.
Or would you consent to the statement, "Yup, users are private individuals and can pirate software as they please. The developer has consented to this by publishing the software."?
You are unlikely to be able to pursue the author and force them to remove their review, so your choices are to not change the icon, or change the icon and accept the bad review. That’s certainly your problem.
I may be old fashined, but I remember it being considered a problem for the seller if a potential customer does not like offered product.
No right or wrong involved, this means less money for you.
My morals are not for sale.
That doesn't sound like making a informed tradeoff, that sounds like the adage of "The customer is always right", which is a very different approach to business.
I highly doubt any company making a statement by changing their app icon hasn't considered the impact and I'm sure is actively watching metrics like uninstall metrics. And I'm sure given they're making the change they found it an acceptable trade off.
So in short, I don't really understand what you're point was trying to make, unless you disagree with my premise that the companies made an informed decision to modify their app icon?
It should always be OK to fire your customers.
When they arrive and you catch them in the act, the damage is already done. (Can applications be downgraded in the typical walled-garden OS environment?)
I’m not against a cause just because I prefer my app icons to not change colors with the political season.
How would you feel if most apps all over the App Store for one whole month used right wing political symbology to signal their compliance? I’m sure you’d get pretty angry about it. Try to put yourself in other’s shoes, and stop participating in this low-effort fascism.
Imagine if half your app icons suddenly changed to incorporate dollar signs in celebration of Capitalism Month. Every day a new CEO is celebrated for their job creation prowess and you can't avoid it because it's everywhere. Would you simply shrug and say, well, we live in a capitalist country so it's not political? Of course not. The craziness that would unleash would bea sight to behold.
Luckily for you, people elsewhere on the political spectrum don't share your need to constantly sealion every conversation and space.
Why would that be? Every month is "Capitalism Month". Also, I can't remember the last time capitalists (the ones with the capital, not their workers who aspire one day to have capital) were oppressed.
Nobody ever overtly celebrates capitalism. It isn't true that there is such a thing as "capitalism month" in the same way there is pride month, with explicitly named events, flags suddenly popping up everywhere and so on. Communism has May 1st but capitalism? No. There never has been. You know this full well, which is why you have to lie to try and distract from the point - if there was such an event you'd hate it.
LGBT people aren't oppressed anywhere that celebrates pride day/week/month but at any rate, the obsession with dividing society into oppressed and oppressors is pure hard left ideology. Always was, since the days of Marx or even the French Revolution. It has no place being forced into people's lives via every possible angle - that is and always has been the strategy of highly destructive people.
Ok, I'll take it. It's your app. I rather not wear the clown shoes when it comes to understanding property and expression rights, but also etiquette in app/business spaces.
Not picking on you specifically, because this attitude is extremely common among software developers these days, but I think this mentality of treating software running on users' machines as "yours" rather than "theirs" is at the core of a lot of problems with the modern software industry.
Software should serve the interests of its users, not its developers. The advent of ubiquitous internet connectivity, automatic updates, and business models based around selling ads rather than selling software have changed this dynamic somewhat and I think that's really unfortunate.
It is my belief the software is serving the betterment of society if it offends the people who don't approve my activism ;-)
More important than serving the individual users is serving society as a whole.
When has ideological grandstanding ever been a successful strategy for convincing anyone of anything? Surely it would just further entrench the convictions of those who disagree with you, harming your own cause and helping theirs gain legitimacy in the eyes of those who are not convinced either way.
Pride logos and icons in companies have made it so you can’t “not think” of LGBT anymore for example. This is HUGE for a lot of people. I’ll give you a specific example, before pride no one in Iran dared speak about LGBT. Now it’s unavoidable when all the apps and services you use have a pride version.
This has already lead to more acceptance privately re: lgbt. The next steps are pushing acceptance to welcoming to them “you’re not going to be treated differently”.
It’s one tool in your entire arsenal.
To oversimplify and quote Obiwan, you were supposed to bring balance to the force, not destroy it.
There are some people you're never going to win over, and pushing them into a position of persecution is sadly a naive political move.
They’re not the group I’m optimizing for, and their population is dropping YoY.
If the existence of a group of people is triggering them that much, then they can go disconnect and live in isolation or something.
No one here is, for example, calling out marriot for shoving bibles and Book of Mormon into my face.
Christianity is constantly shoved into my face with no ability to opt out. They can deal with pride flags.
There is acres of christian art and media that simply doesn't register for the populace. People scroll by Jude Law as the Young Pope on Netflix and ignore the methodist Christian substructure of star wars. People can be told via memes that ObiWan is like space jesus and it's like water off a duck's back.
Christianity doesn't oppress people, they can't even identify it, when it is infront of the open eyes. People naturally don't even know what it is, that they reject. Can't describe what a priest would even say.
Bibles in the marriot is a charity and mormons are debatably not christian at all. Joseph smith was not jesus, sorry.
But make no mistake we all know what pride is, what lgbtq people want legislated and exactly how it's going to affect us. Our choice be damned.
2. Am I reading this right? You think LGBT people and pride is oppressing people more than Christianity?
Christanity is not noticed. The public rarely knows the content of the faith it rejects. And the point is reinforced by the complete lack of knowledge about what it is and how pride might impact it, in this conversation.
2. "Normalization" and "oppression" are not words that mean what I'm talking about.
Christianity is "unknown" to the public and the LGBT politicians turn a blind eye to people they don't want to relate to. They are tripping over landmines they don't see. I pointed this out and was met with the same old desire to flee from relating to Christianity, as we see from lgbtq activists all the time.
Not everybody thinks pride is a good thing nor that it should be shoved in their face, thinking that media spam is going to result in political conversions is hopelessly naive to how faith functions, what christianity is and without mutual knowledge of one another's worldview, it'll never be resolved in love.
And this extremity is definitely something LGBT folks see all the time. Their states are passing laws banning them from sports and bathrooms. LGBT issues can no longer be mentioned in their schools. So don't play the pity card when Christians behave like monsters, and the non-Christian world responds in kind.
I'm just saying the truth as I see it and think shared knowledge should be the basis of political unity, not activist tribalism.
Ohh the irony.
As a European atheist living in Texas, I know exactly what Christians want legislating, since they never stop bleating about it.
Ronald Reagan Jr appears to be the only person willing to hold America to its own basic constitutional amendments, frankly.
This is one of the most important points of the conversation. The other most important point would be the difficulty / impossibility of reverting to an older version of the application on mobile systems. When you put them together you get users powerless on their own devices, stuck in a needless dilemma between keeping the application in its new, worsened state, or throwing away the whole thing.
On my PC I download "portable" / .zip releases of software whenever possible, and I keep every single package. If a program has an update with a regression, I can just choose to not use it, or run it side-by-side with the older version.
On Android, F-Droid serves the last couple APKs for each app, and I download these to my PC also. However, Android makes side-by-side installation difficult unless you recompile the app with a different package ID. If it's a closed-source app from the Play Store, you're screwed. I would not be surprised if it's impossible on iphone.
So, I disable auto updates, and I ignore the boy who cries "important security fixes". Better luck next time.
The history of “rainbow washing” in corporate marketing material served the original purpose of saying “you’re welcome here”. There are many stores/places that choose to not serve queer people.
Publicly sharing that you will allow queer people to use your product is serving the interest of those users, but perhaps not the interest of every user. But the remaining users thankfully never had to question if they’d be served by that business, so there’s no need to signal anything to them.
> A 2019 study by Hua Sun and Lei Gao of Iowa State University found that from 1990 to 2015, same-sex couples were 73% more likely to be turned down for a mortgage than similarly qualified different-sex couples. In addition, same-sex couples who were approved for mortgages paid about 0.02% to 0.2% more, on average, in interest and fees.
https://www.investopedia.com/mortgage-lending-for-lgbtq-peop...
The US government has made positive changes to combat this practice,
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-lgbt-banks/u-s-banks-...
but you would be mistaken to assume such discrimination has completely disappeared or doesn't still exist in similar forms.
So if the banks are inputting this to a "go/no go" algorithm, the results do not surprise me at all.
Also, we aren’t past that point.
If you are doing that in a free app, OK, but you are going to get bad reviews from the users you vandalized, and might be violating the advertising/spam rules of the platform your are distributing on.
When your fashionable beliefs fall out of fashion, it will be your problem soon enough. Just don't cry about oppression then.
The righteousness of these individuals make them blind to the fact the pendulum swings back and forth.
That's why they're down-voting you. That's why they're posturing about not being able to say what they think, because they know what they think won't fly here, yet. Meanwhile, of course, out in the real world, we have right-wing preachers talking about how gay people should be shot, we have half of the political mainstream suddenly accusing LGBT activists of being pedophiles...but we're supposed to believe these guys here that it's just them suddenly being weird and territorial about the icons on their screens
By pulling your head out of the sand and paying attention.
You just condemn the heresy and scream, like all good true believers.
It was a nice illustration of my point.
Pedophilia enjoyer.
Do keep up the histrionics and the half-assed insults as you argue here, though. Those antics will absolutely make people take you seriously.
Sure, but then I'll make sure that I won't use your apps if I can.
And we have the right to complain about these things as much as we want. It's your PR problem, not ours.
You might own the app's code but if the user paid for the app, they're entitled to not wanting their screen to become some billboard to The Current Thing™. Buy a few billboards and airtime if you feel you should shove your political beliefs and opinions down everyone's throat. With this behavior, you're the representation of everything wrong with corporate political activism and the tech industry at large: You're the app's developer, and for some reason you think you know more than the user.
(We may think of exceptions where an app is specifically about posting such messages, like an iconographic motd, but this is not what's here addressed.)
Let's create a scenario where the changing of an icon which is visible on your phone to anyone around you might actually present a danger in a certain country.
What if your app changed to have a gay pride flag and one of your users lived in an extremely homophobic country where any signs of support of homosexuality could actually result in fines or even jail time?
The poor user (Who may or may not agree with your ideology) who has been using your app for months has no idea that your icon is literally going to change without their knowledge or approval.
But you didn't think of this scenario, did you?
Here's what comes up on my (Fedora, obviously) machine when I run VIM with no filename specified:
VIM - Vi IMproved
version 8.2.5052
by Bram Moolenaar et al.
Modified by <bugzilla@redhat.com>
Vim is open source and freely distributable
Help poor children in Uganda!
type :help iccf<Enter> for information
type :q<Enter> to exit
type :help<Enter> or <F1> for on-line help
type :help version8<Enter> for version info
No technical measures exist to stop you from removing this call for donations, but it's more work to patch it out then it is to just ignore it. This makes FOSS software a pretty good vehicle for political activism. Not just the fact that organizing a hostile fork to remove a message like this one is too much trouble and makes you look like a jerk, but also because political activism is a good way to motivate people to write and release software for free in the first place, making up for how difficult it is to really monetize FOSS software.
This doesn't bother me too much and I don't even seem to notice it consciously, but I am really glad that every utility doesn't have an unrelated charity pitch (or other advertisement) built into it. Though I think a number of GNU programs do contain free software advocacy messages/advertisements, those don't bother me too much either.
What really irritated me though was the nagware message in GNU parallel soliciting bogus citations (or money, which may be less ethically problematic but is still annoying.) I didn't hate it enough to fork the code and remove the nag message myself (or fight for it as a patch to the Debian packages or something) but I quit using GNU parallel because it left a bad taste. I imagine a nightmare Linux shareware edition distro where every program (and library, driver, kernel module, etc.) prints out a nagware message that you have to turn off.
set shm+=IBut if a defragmentation tool suddently rubs some "Free Tibet" activism into your face by changing their app logo and prompting a message, one can rightfully wonder what the developer is trying to achieve aside from alienating part of the userbase.
For people who identify things primarily by color rather than shape, I can totally see a temporary palette swap causing that. Others might go mostly by the shape, and care less. (I'm one of those people, though the way Google's apps changed colors three years ago was an exception: they basically ended up applying the principles of camouflage to break the shapes in a way that completely destroyed my ability to distinguish them at a glance.)
And then there are people who just go by spatial location, or by the text, and couldn't tell you the first thing about the icon itself. I assume those people would instead be driven up the walls if the icons were re-arranged automatically by app popularity, or if apps were constantly being renamed.
> Getting a useful app for free (!)
The author did say these were "likely" apps they had paid for.
When I’m at work I expect people to mostly talk about work, not divide the office by broadcasting controversial political views via their avatar and posting hot takes in their status messages.
With developers I expect the apps to solve some problem I have. That’s it. I know a person, or team of people, wrote it but their politics are completely irrelevant to their ability to solve my problem via and app. I also don’t need to know about their family, hobbies, religion, or dreams.
Not only is it “thoughts and prayers” or Facebook filter tier support,
Not only is it a usability and accessibility disaster,
It also breaks trust between user and developer.
My device is not the appropriate place for your activism.
The latter has become a federal holiday so it's not exactly activism IMO to show alliance with that.
If the problem is that apps change logos then that should be criticized, not activism. If the problem is with political causes that should be the focus, not interface. To mix both seems an excuse to legitimate one criticism using the other.
Also critiquing activism is completely valid.
Passionately held belief is not somehow above reproach at all times
If you don't like the logo, swap it the application files. Oh wait, sources are unavailable? If you want your phone to serve you, guess you better jump on the FLOSS bandwagon.
Given the timing, there’s a very good chance that it’s related to Pride month here in the US. It seems even more probable when you consider the context: very few companies change their logos for Juneteenth (the other contender), but many companies slap a rainbow on it for Pride.
So: odds are, the author is upset about having LGBTQ “activism” pushed on their devices.
I would invite everyone to remember this the next time someone wants a “politics-free” workspace. Specifically, remember that a vague assertion that LGBTQ people exist (a rainbow, on a logo), is what some folks consider “political.”
Nobody (at least in the West) are denying LGBT people exist. Companies who put the flag up are just virtue signalling.
If the app icon was changed for a single day for Juneteenth would you sympathize with the OP?
The OP was not complaining about the actual political issue. He was complaining about changing the app icon to push their politics. The OP just wants to be able to easily find the app: "As part of that bargain, you have to identify your app visually so I can find it" and doesn't want the app author's politics on his home screen: "I might actually agree with your political cause, but you crossed a line. My device screen is not an appropriate place for your political statements. So cut that shit out"
Let me ask you a question. Would you still be making the same points if the political activism was putting a Russian flag as the app icon? Maybe they feel like there is a dehumanizing effort against Russians since Russians are being called orcs by Ukrainians. Based on your logic that would not be political since a vauge assertion that Russians exist is not political.
I think I do as well, I don't really want all the icons on my phone changing colors and shapes every other day since that is just bad UX when I'm hunting for the right button.
And when it comes to politics I don't want anyone else's politics pushed into my personal life when I don't expect to encounter it, even if I agree with it. It is particularly difficult these days to donate to any worthy cause because you know that it is interpreted as an invitation to harassment and you'll get put onto lists that get sold and get bombarded with mail, e-mail and door-to-door solicitation.
I've practically had to throw people off my property -- for causes that I agree with and donate to similar organizations -- because they're just being rude about my personal space.
If you show up on my porch waving a pride flag I'm going to be very irritated and ask you to leave. And you might want to be careful about asserting that anyone who doesn't like having a pride flag pushed in their face is automatically homophobic/transphobic. There are those of us who are non-neurotypical who find all the demands on our attention by society, in total, just fucking exhausting, and you might want to keep in mind concepts like consent and privacy.
It isn’t clear whatsoever. It would have been trivial to mention the other, far more common reasons why app icons change and make a fairly politically-neutral argument. However, they did not choose to do so.
In fact, they never even go so far as to say “and these political statements hinder my ability to recognize things visually.” But politics, well - they brought up the concept no less than 4 times in the brief post.
What they did was leave it open for you to read your own perspectives into it.
> And you might want to be careful about asserting that anyone who doesn't like having a pride flag pushed in their face is automatically homophobic/transphobic.
I have taken great pains to avoid this very assertion. What I did assert was this: “it’s likely related to Pride month, and the author considers LGBTQ identities political.”
If you believe that “considering LGBTQ identities to be political” is a synonym for “homophobia”, you are welcome to that connection. It’s not unreasonable.
But again: my point is that my existence is indeed political. Whether the author supports my community or not isn’t the point I’m making, at all.
Said differently: to me the dog-whistle seems to be “this annoying group that I don’t care about won’t leave me alone, they should shut up.”
I don’t think that’s outright malicious, necessarily.
From urban dictionary: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=dog+whistle
> Dog whistle is a type of strategy of communication that sends a message that the general population will take a certain meaning from, but a certain group that is "in the know" will take away the secret, intended message.
If so, then that means they're trying to signal a hidden message. From what you've said, I'm assuming that you believe that they're trying to hide the fact that they don't like LGBT people or messages to them. I think that is malicious. I think the non-malicious perspective of what they wrote is that they like product logos being used for visual identification of the product.
That said, the author didn’t tell us; so we’re left to guess.
We don't need to guess. The post was agnostic to the political cause.
Your guess is probably correct. We all know why they aren't being explicit about it, right? Someone here literally threatened that they "actively" won't hire me for commenting on this post :-)
> Specifically, remember that a vague assertion that LGBTQ people exist
It's not vague at all, it's literally a flag. And it's not an acknowledgment of existence of some group. The most charitable interpretation is that it's a protest against heteronormativity, which many people naturally support.
> is what some folks consider “political.”
Of course it is political, pretending it isn't is disingenuous.
Of course: there is significant risk to saying hateful and bigoted things outright, so folks resort to dog-whistling.
> It's not vague at all, it's literally a flag. And it's not an acknowledgment of existence of some group. The most charitable interpretation is that it's a protest against heteronormativity, which many people naturally support.
I disagree, completely. The most “charitable” interpretation is that it’s a vague, non-committal statement of support. The interpretation you mention is far more specific and - when phrased the way you did - antagonistic interpretation of things.
> Of course it is political, pretending it isn't is disingenuous.
Of course it is. We agree on that point. What we likely do not agree on is why: it is only political to me because other people choose to make it so. If folks just … let LGBTQ people exist, with full equality, there would be precious little political about it at all.
Conservatives make the same argument about things their in group finds important as well. Taking the lords name in vein, disparaging mohammed, etc. Your in group is in power so you’re able to speak power to truth, but it isn’t a principled or healthy stance.
Society needs to learn how to tolerate differing opinions.
> Society needs to learn how to tolerate differing opinions.
Would you care to expand on those?
> Would you care to expand on those?
Freedom of speech within the rules of the law should not lead to one becoming a pariah. Morals are relative and change overtime which causes culture wars like the one we’re in now. It benefits all to reduce the impact of these wars - ie, when people are operating within the law they should not be punished.
This means that we need laws we can all agree on…but that is a much more solvable problem than the mob rule we currently have. The current social environment is might makes right.
> Freedom of speech within the rules of the law should not lead to one becoming a pariah.
I’m not sure how you’d square that with the idea of “freedom of association.”
> Morals are relative and change overtime which causes culture wars like the one we’re in now.
Indeed. Your proposal would halt that process. Is that healthy? Who would that benefit, and who would that harm?
> It benefits all to reduce the impact of these wars - ie, when people are operating within the law they should not be punished.
And the law does not punish them. I don’t think it ethical or moral to enshrine such viewpoint protection in the law. No group should be able to legally force someone to like them.
And frankly, that’s not what’s happening today. Nobody is being legally forced to accept LGBTQ people.
> This means that we need laws we can all agree on…but that is a much more solvable problem than the mob rule we currently have.
I don’t know how you’d solve that problem, short of coercion.
That's not really the case, and I assume that's probably good news for you since you seem to be a liberal.
The vast majority of non-democratic institutions in the US lean heavily liberal: media, academia, and tech companies are all very liberal. The current SCOTUS is the only major exception.
It might not remain like this forever though, because they are alienating a good chunk of the population.
Mixing democratic and non-democratic institutions hardly seems fair, especially since only one of those has the direct power to govern.
You left out the Senate, which is split 50/50 and likely won’t be shortly. You also left out state governments, which are overwhelmingly controlled in totality by the Conservative party. Not to mention the federal judiciary.
The idea that conservatives aren’t in control is simply false; they are in control of vast swaths of government, and will almost certainly consolidate that power shortly. Even the nominally liberal-controlled elements of government are stymied by the conservative element, a defacto loss of control.
If you want to stick to soft power, we could talk more about that. But if you want to include hard power, then your argument holds no water.
While you are correct in that the Republicans have a good chance of flipping the Senate, my claim was about non-democratic institutions.
I think it's fair to count the Senate as a democratic one. Since the ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment [1], Senators are directly elected.
> Not to mention the federal judiciary.
I'm not sure about that. According to Ballotpedia [2], 403 of the current Article III federal judges were appointed by a Democrat president, while 391 were appointed by a Republican.
> If you want to stick to soft power, we could talk more about that. But if you want to include hard power, then your argument holds no water.
That's probably the root of our disagreement. Soft power is still political power. Tocqueville had warned us about soft despotism. [3]
One test to determine who's in power is to see whose values are more dangerous to make fun of.
[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventeenth_Amendment_to_the...
In any case: I think my broader point of “conservatives have plenty of power” is pretty reasonable. I’m not sure I agree with your implication that it’s more dangerous to make fun of liberals.
If by that you mean “I wish to make fun of liberals and their values but then still remained gainfully employed by a company that claims to adhere to those values”, then sure I guess you have a point.
But in the same fashion I highly doubt I could get a job at the Heritage Foundation, you know? Tribalism doesn’t necessarily have a direct relationship to power.
Neither of those examples harms or affects another person. Preventing two people from entering into a contract because of their genders does affect others. That is the difference.
However, I do agree with the opinion that changing app icons for any non app related reason is stupid. There is no need for political signaling to affect usability, which changing an icon surely does.
Protest? Come on. The most charitable interpretation is that the person making such a statement merely think non hetero people deserve the same rights as anyone else. Which is quite different from taking a position against something.
> Heteronormativity is the concept that heterosexuality is the preferred or normal mode of sexual orientation. It assumes the gender binary (i.e., that there are only two distinct, opposite genders) and that sexual and marital relations are most fitting between people of opposite sex.
The idea of promoting a "gender binary" and treating the exceptions as abnormalities is quite diagonal to displaying a Rainbow flag. So is believing that heterosexuality is "normal" in some sense.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Heteronormativity...
There is a very negative connotation to “abnormal,” is that what you meant to imply?
Also, you can have too much of a good thing. Doesn't mean said thing is bad.
There are many things that "just exist", but one subset of them receives massive media attention, mandatory acknowledgments, and is shielded from a lot of criticism, while another subset is constantly being ridiculed, mocked and villified.
Pride month would be fair if we also had, let's say, Fathers' month, emphasizing the importance of teaching your boys self-reliance, emotional control, delayed gratification. Or housewives' month, praising women that sacrifice careers and spend countless time teaching their kids important skills that will help them achieve independence and success in life.
But no, the media has decided that all these things are not important, but one's sexual orientation, a very private thing that makes many people uncomfortable and has zero relation with actual business, needs to be broadcasted on every corner.
So the whole idea of a politics-free workspace is that we keep these things to our private lives. We don't argue which subcategory deserves a month of acknowledgement, and who can get by with half-a-Friday, we instead focus on actual work. Like have a month of refactoring, or a month of unit tests. Because, you know, having common goals brings people together. And giving one subset of people different rights from another one (even if it's non-monetary tokenism) makes a workplace toxic and increases tension.
I personally only see the downsides of the current approach:
1. It attracts people that enjoying making others uncomfortable, and all kids of trolls/attention seekers.
2. The former group keeps pushing the limits, demanding more and more unrealistic things, slowly pushing the public opinion against the minority in question.
3. This is used as an excuse for more restrictions of freedom (like the hate speech laws), that are further abused, igniting more and more tensions between people of opposing views.
[0] https://www.atlassian.com/blog/productivity/how-to-write-sma...
Who mandates that?
> shielded from a lot of criticism
By whom? From where I stand, a lot of folks have stated calling me and mine “groomers,” which is pretty critical in my book. They seem free enough to criticize to me?
> while another subset is constantly being ridiculed, mocked and villified
Each side mocks the other; so it seems to be a moot point to me.
> Pride month would be fair if we also had, let's say, Fathers' month
> Or housewives' month
> But no, the media has decided that all these things are not important
The media certainly has not decided as much. This is still what we, as a society, glorify. What would you say shows that the media has decided these things are no longer important?
> one's sexual orientation, a very private thing that makes many people uncomfortable and has zero relation with actual business, needs to be broadcasted on every corner.
The world broadcasts heterosexuality on every corner. What’s the difference?
> So the whole idea of a politics-free workspace is that we keep these things to our private lives.
I would disagree. My experience has been that “politics-free” spaces in fact allow the dominant politics to be expressed, while silencing other groups.
> And giving one subset of people different rights from another one (even if it's non-monetary tokenism) makes a workplace toxic and increases tension.
You can’t say that one group is being given “different rights” and then in the next breath say that it’s actually “non-monetary tokenism.” Rhetorically, that’s nonsensical. It uses the gravitas of a “right” to make a point but then immediately admits that the point was false all along.
So let’s drop the nonsense about “special rights” - this is about acknowledgement, or “tokenism”.
There isn’t one. There is too much blatant heterosexuality in our culture.
> The media certainly has not decided as much. This is still what we, as a society, glorify. What would you say shows that the media has decided these things are no longer important?
That we don’t have a month celebrating abstinence and sexual propriety?
My statement was referring to the immediate parent, which bemoaned the lack of “Fathers appreciation month” and “housewives appreciation.”
How does the lack of an “abstinence celebration month” support the idea I was responding to - the idea that the media has decided that “fathers” and “housewives” are unimportant?
> There is too much blatant heterosexuality in our culture.
We certainly agree on that.
That's a very specific thing. Children of certain ages would go great lengths to feel different from the previous generation, "cool", "hip". Decades of various subcultures from Punks to Emos is pretty solid evidence. Grooming is trying to use the need to feel different in order to convince them to do sex-related things before they have a solid intrinsic feeling for it. The motivation for groomers could be finding these children sexually attractive, trolling (deliberately convincing someone to do irreversible changes that will cause them long-term suffering), or compensating for the groomer's own childhood trauma by forcing others to relive it (the worst bullies are former bully victims). I think, this is a legitimate problem and it's important to distinguish it from initiatives that actually help children (e.g. preventing bullying based on looks).
>They seem free enough to criticize to me?
No mainstream media outlet ever covers this angle - it's a complete taboo. But there are plenty of examples where rather mild criticism is immediately branded homophobic/transphobic and actions are taken to prevent other people from considering this point of view.
>The world broadcasts heterosexuality on every corner.
I would be interested to hear some examples.
>You can’t say that one group is being given “different rights” and then in the next breath say that it’s actually “non-monetary tokenism.” Rhetorically, that’s nonsensical.
Respectfully disagree. People do have an intrinsic need for some amount of other's attention, and can feel it very well. Many social rituals are built around it: networking (periodically paying attention to each other), arts (having others pay attention to what you create), the concept of celebrities. The HR departments have figured out long ago that some amount of coworkers' attention can substitute a raise (in terms of lowering the % of resignations). Like the whole "employee of the month" posters. I call it non-monetary because it doesn't cost the employer nearly as much as a sizable pay raise. But it's something people subconsciously feel and track very well. You take a small amount of everyone's attention and you direct it towards a specific group or individual. People belonging to that group feel slightly rewarded, people outside it feel slightly demotivated. Like if your boss congratulated your coworker with their birthday, but didn't congratulate you.
It isn’t a taboo; it’s fallacious. That’s the reason mainstream media doesn’t cover it: there is no epidemic of LGBT people “grooming” children. It’s a made-up thing designed to whip up a frenzy of hatred towards LGBTQ people and justify rolling back civil rights.
I appreciate your lengthy discussion of what grooming is, and how you think it’s a real problem. However, in context it sounds like you are saying that my example of criticism isn’t legitimate because LGBTQ people are “groomers.” That isn’t what you meant, is it?
> Respectfully disagree.
Everything you say after this point is interesting, but utterly unrelated to what I said. I said it’s rhetorical nonsense to elevate “non-monetary tokenism” to a “right,” and I don’t see where you’ve engaged with that idea.
In a country of 300M+ people there will be always plenty of examples of both. And a civilized society would attempt to discern the 2 different behaviors and find a reasonable way to distinguish them formally. The media is not doing that - it artificially divides people into 2 polar opposite camps and forces you to take side based on identity, rather than discussing specific behaviors.
>However, in context it sounds like you are saying that my example of criticism isn’t legitimate because LGBTQ people are “groomers.”
No, I am saying that some people are groomers. And some people are LGBTQ. And the groomers (some percentage of them being LGBTQ) would yell "homophobia" and claim that their critics are trying to steal civil liberties (while some of the critics would actually be trying to do that and trying to use anti-groomer guise for cover up). So it's important to make a distinction between behaviors (e.g. allowing gay people to marry) and affiliation (like identity-based quotas and virtue signalling), because the former is rather hard to abuse, and the latter is an abuser magnet.
>Everything you say after this point is interesting, but utterly unrelated to what I said.
Oh, I would argue it is. Attention is a legitimate intangible asset. Pride month is taking a small "attention tax" from everyone, and redistributing it based on identity. Stop doing that and the tensions in the society will decrease. If you want activism, divert it towards actions (like bullying is bad, regardless of the victim's identity) and you will get people to actually agree rather than splinter.
This is a pretty odd statement.
In any case: if you want to try and split hairs about this, that’s your call. What I’ll say is this: nobody seemed to care much about a “grooming” epidemic until a few months ago, and since then it’s only been about LGBTQ people.
Nobody else is making the distinctions you’re trying to make here.
Not really. Mild and reasonable concerns have been raised on the right-wing websites for at least a year. The media swept it under the rug. Then the attention-seekers from the right side picked it up and started exaggerating the issue to get visibility to their personas. The media labeled them "far right extremists" and completely dismissed the point of their complaints. Now it's reaching the state where every meme-maker with an MS paint feels compelled to photoshop something about groomers, and that's where you can't ignore the problem anymore. Congratulations, you have suppressed the voices of reason and you will now have to deal with an angry mob.
>Nobody else is making the distinctions you’re trying to make here.
Some people are. Most people aren't. That's exactly why your country will splinter. In some states you will get a ticket for showing up in public with a same-sex partner. In others teaches will be financially incentivized to reach the quota of trans students, as it will be seen as helping people find their true identity. Both extremes are idiotic, but that's how tribalism works and that's how empires fall. You can safely ignore it for a single-digit number of years, but you will see it in your lifetime.
> Mild and reasonable concerns
The concerns are not reasonable, and not mild. This idealistic “all orientations have this problem” take is blind to the fact that this is criticism leveled at the LGBTQ community for decades.
The media “swept it under the rug” because the association with LGBTQ people isn’t necessary to address the societal issue of sexual abuse. They rightfully didn’t want to revive the tired slurs of the 70s, 80s, and 90s.
> In others teaches will be financially incentivized to reach the quota of trans students, as it will be seen as helping people find their true identity.
This is just nonsense. I’ve been trying to engage in good faith so far, but the idea of “trans quotas” is completely ridiculous.
But for people who are LGBTQ, it is an expression not just of pride but also sheer survival and resilience, something that wasn't guaranteed even in recent history (and still isn't, in many places).
I think it's easier to think of something as "political" when it's different from one's own norms, because the status quo is often invisible. And most of these minority groups don't seek to convert the status quo, only to find space for them to be themselves. There's a difference between evangelism and asking for tolerance, between asking for respect and reversing the oppression.
> There are many things that "just exist", but one subset of them receives massive media attention, mandatory acknowledgments, and is shielded from a lot of criticism, while another subset is constantly being ridiculed, mocked and villified.
Isn't that just how culture works? It's not some baked-in static thing that we figure out once and then never have to discuss again.
As to why certain topics get more positive coverage than others, well, probably it's just cultural norms trying to change, but seeing friction when it meets the status quo. Change is hard on a lot of people, institutions, cultures, and religions -- and that conflict is therefore newsworthy (and inflammatory and gets all the hits on social media, sigh).
The things that are changing get more coverage because they are actually newsworthy -- they are novel. "How to raise your kids" is a very important topic, but it's not exactly newsworthy because it's not new. It's been around for hundreds of thousands of years. You're still welcome to raise your family in a heterosexual nuclear way if you'd like, but it's relatively new for LGBTQ couples to be able to openly adopt (or otherwise have children), or even to work and marry and walk around in the open. Likewise, "How to be a housewife" is also a very important topic (and a difficult job!). And frankly it would be great if we celebrated both kids and moms more, and gave kids enough schooling and shelter and care and love to be able to grow and thrive as kids, and paid the working class enough such that single-earner households become viable again. For what it's worth, all those same concerns apply to gay parents raising kids too, but it would be considered "ideological" or "political" to discuss that in some circles.
> And giving one subset of people different rights from another one (even if it's non-monetary tokenism) makes a workplace toxic and increases tension.
So... like giving health benefits to one's heterosexual spouse, before gay marriage was legal?
Or... having people take free, undocumented PTO for a personal errand, but only if they have kids to pick up?
Or... paying and promoting white hetero men more?
Or... having reproductive health covered by your health plan?
Or... having Christmas as a mandatory paid holiday and refusing to cover other religious days?
There is so much in the workplace that is already discriminatory to many people. The difference is that the status quo has the power to just invisibly normalize these things and so we don't really have to think about it day to day, but the underdogs have to use "political" messaging or advocacy just to try to reach parity with the status quo majority.
Is something only toxic and tension-causing if it's different from the status quo? What if the status quo IS the problem for some? The "non-monetary tokenism" usually applies to some historically oppressed group for whom "leave politics out of _______" has resulted in actual harm, monetary or worse, upon their lives.
> We don't argue which subcategory deserves a month of acknowledgement, and who can get by with half-a-Friday
That is only the case when your workplace is either homogenous enough (which works well), or else invisibly oppressive (which doesn't work well), or else is diverse but also well paid enough that people choose to look the other way (which also works well, but is rare). In practice the second is the most common, I think, where you don't really talk about it but there's this permanent underclass who's just otherized and neglected. The cultural movements we're seeing now are because many of them have had enough and feel the need to speak up rather than to continue being marginalized. And frankly that goes both ways: all across the ideological spectrum, people are culturally dissatisfied with the status quo, each other, their employer, their government, etc. Our companies are ultimately just reflections of the individuals who own and staff them, and they don't exist in some cultureless vacuum...
If your workplace really hasn't had any discussions about any of this stuff, um... maybe it should? It's an inevitability that it's going to affect the employees/customers/stakeholders in one way or another. And if you don't address it, it's just going to blow up on its own when the pressure builds enough. I think cultural schisms are like earthquakes: you can have many small ones that are easy to address as they come up, or you can let the pressure build and build and build until it explodes catastrophically.
> We instead focus on actual work. Like have a month of refactoring, or a month of unit tests.
People are part of the work too. Whether it's taking a new hire out to lunch, or celebrating someone's baby shower, or not offending someone with a gift of the wrong religion, or letting a dad pick up his kids from school, or treating someone's same-sex partner with the same respect you would anyone else at a +1 event. How could you expect to work well with people if you can't even show them basic human dignity and respect? "Shut up and go refactor that test" is pretty awful, no matter their sexual orientation or political ideology. IMO we're people first and employees second, and if your workplace can't even acknowledge that basic tenet of the relationship... eh... :shrug:
From the author: "I might actually agree with your political cause, but you crossed a line."
It would have been utterly trivial to make clear that it wasn’t about a specific issue. Instead, it was only implied.
seems pretty clear it’s not a specific issue
People have the right to make aesthetic choices about the things in their life. I would be pissed if someone came into my house and painted my walls without my permission. Even if I agree with the cause, it's my choice to make.
What isn’t said is also important, and “editing” is arguably the hardest part of writing. “Negative space” in art is a powerful tool that one can wield, and I think it’s just as applicable to writing as it is to visual media.
And you may not believe it, but most people in non-totalitarian cultures don’t want social/cultural/political symbols planted like a flag in their personal cognitive or physical territory. It’s bad enough that corporations brand the shit out of every physical surface. Now we have intrusions by political movements and social causes.
This is spam and it shouldn’t have to be tolerated.
I miss ResEdit and the option of using a quasi-developer utility to swap out icons and other assets from the "resource fork" of any Mac app. As a consumer, I loved how everything was externalized in a common format.
Tell us how you really feel…
That is… an insane stretch to say the least.
I'm being earnest.
Why are you assuming things not stated?
How is that helpful?
Also, there is a Juneteenth flag? It’s a full time job to keep up these days.
Again, was just pointing out that this article about 'Political Activism' is getting a ton of traction on the one day of the year when we (in America) recognize the historical oppression of both LGBT and black people.
Am I missing a trend of app icons that recognize other 'political' causes? Because if the author is mad about rainbow or Juneteenth coloring of their apps, they should just say that and not self-censor to the point of ambiguity.
If a bunch of apps are changing their icons to support random propositions, then I agree with them, but I don't think that is what is happening.
>Also, there is a Juneteenth flag? It’s a full time job to keep up these days.
Keep up with what exactly (By the way, no one is asking you to take on this job)? Flags? Because I can guarantee that the rate of flag-designing is multiple-orders of magnitude lower than it was even in the early 20th century.
Yes.
2) None of those apps actually changed their icons for Ukraine, except the one based in Ukraine
Nowadays, articles get a lot of criticism for having "an agenda". That has never been a bad thing, everybody one way or another has an agenda. Nothing wrong with that.
But in that noise it has been lost the idea that "hidden agendas" are bad. Someone pushes for an idea, but in reality they are pushing for some effect that has nothing to do with that original idea.
"Hidden agendas" are bad because make dialog, understanding and getting to agreements difficult if not impossible.
Slavery was still practiced in Kentucky and Delaware until the ratification of the 13th Amendment.
For example, if I am searching a programming language documentation site I do not need to see a political banner.
There is a time and place for political discussion and expression. It is not on my phone screen or sites meant to get things done.