Google's Obedience to Trump's "Lake America" Order Follows a Depressing Pattern | Hacker News Reader

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

motherjones.com

45 pointscdrnsf19 comments

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.

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.

There's a long tradition of doing this, like how everyone in France was in the resistance and everyone in Germany was a Mitläufer ("fellow traveller"), etc.

This will still work (it’s just funny)

https://www.reddit.com/r/technicallythetruth/comments/vd5j87...

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.

It's easier just to tune the US out and belly up to the Chinese stack. Looking forward to my BYD. Americans enjoy your cybertrucks

How the GNIS Lake Ontario/Lake America name change in the U.S. will appear in Maps

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49495947

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

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.

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.

Never ceases to depress me how many topics are now flagged on HN, or how pointedly servile the editorial stance has become.

HN didn't even dream it would need to recalibrate after its hero snapped a Nazi salute during inauguration.

We need to take the conversation elsewhere. Capture is not forever.

A pointless war with Iran, High inflation, pointless renaming, open crypto grifting.

Alphabet wants to make their legacy similar to Trump’s legacy.

I wish they had balls to push back.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

It does come up in legal arguments and definite descriptions. "The Person Living at Lake Ontario Drive" might pick out something different, or nothing, after s/Ontario/America/g

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.

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