Reminds me a lot of after 9/11 when they tried to change French Fries to Freedom fries. That stuck about as well as water on teflon.
Anytime I hear someone complain about cancel culture I bring up freedom fries.
The Left: its called an Allow List now, you racists! The Right: its called the Gulf of America, you commies!
Jesus, we’re pathetic.
One is propaganda made up by right wing nerds and one is the president of fucking america if you didnt catch how silly you were being right now
Nobody calls it that though. No one who is actually left-wing thought that calling them blacklist / white list was offensive.
Is this another of those things where someone wrote some mild Substack post about “maybe the phrase black list does imply black = bad” that maybe five people read before conservatives decided that it represents the ideological position of all leftists?
I mean if Turkey can just decide to change it’s name and everyone has to respect it (not me Turkey it is), I don’t see why this is different
Türkiye had historical usage and precedent; “the Gulf of America” does not. Admittedly, Erdoğan was probably motivated by the same base nativist urges. But there’s something substantially different in saying “we want our nation to be called this” versus “we want to rename international territory.”
Yes but thry changed their own name, not the name of some other bit of the world that isn’t anything to do with them.
Why would google, a company of such unfathomable power and reach, be fearful of Trump? They can say no and it won’t affect their bottomline much.
Google, or rather Alphabet, is an American company. Trump is the president of America, the most powerful country militarily and economically. Alphabet is also subject to American laws and is currently under an anti-trust lawsuit with America. What makes you think Google can stand up against the US?
They’re not required to change it. All the law does is officially change the name for official government purposes it doesn’t require everyone in the US to start calling it that.
Fearful, or in agreement with?
I’ll keep an eye out for a firefox plugin to change it back.
Google; we’re still calling it Twitter you think we’re gonna start calling it Gulf of America just because a doofus says so?
I cannot believe they bent on this at all. This isn’t the will of the people or a problem we asked to solve it is the asinine rantings of a fucking baby. Why the fuck am I stuck in this timeline holy shit.
I’m trying to work out who this is for. Presumably his fan club will approve, but I don’t think it was something that even they were particularly asking for.
well google always displays the locally official names and borders. so just business as usual.
but why does the president of the usa get to decide what places are called? isn’t there a cartography department or something?
Yes. The United States Board on Geographic Names is the group within the Department of the Interior which handles these matters. They are a part of the executive branch. I suspect that you can follow a chain of delegated authorities through that board, up the civil service hierarchy, landing on the desk of the President.
This is an example of the system not accounting for, or being ambivalent about, the election of someone to that office with a fascist ideology.
fair enough. i guess the usa never did a great job ar limiting their presidents power. that way he can extend his reach way further down, than he should…
“The Trump administration has passed a resolution saying that Mexico will now be called ‘America South’ and Canada ‘America North’. Google said it will follow the government’s lead in changing the names on it’s maps app.”
How do people not understand that Google Maps is regional, and the region sees their official government-endorsed maps?
They never wasted any time thinking about that, I fear
This idea originated as a Stephen Colbert joke in 2010. As always I’m sure some will call this some sort of self-aware troll by Trump, but what are the odds of that.
Given Colbert took the absurdity of conservatism in the US and cranked it up to 11… I’m not surprised it’s becoming reality now.
One of my favorite funfacts about the Colbert Report is that many conservatives couldn’t tell it was satire.
So much so that Colbert earlier on was regularly invited to things like White House Dinner with Bush and Conservative Conferences. Even when he ended the show he claimed he had a lot of fan mail from Republicans saying they’d miss “Having a sane voice of reason on an otherwise liberal media network.”
Some Conservative Subreddits even had to have guidelines explaining he was satire, some claiming he was a straight up “Left Wing Disinformation Agent!”
That’s incredible.
I was quite conservative back in 2006, having been raised that way and still years away from my “enlightenment,” but I knew Colbert was satire. I still thought he was hilarious. I’ve always thought it’s important to be able to laugh at yourself.
Bush clearly felt the same, he was laughing right along with the roast, and had just finished doing a bit with a Bush impersonator that also roasted him.
But Trump is incapable of humility, and cannot stand the traditional presidential roast at the Press Correspondents’ Dinner.
It’s giving big “freedom fries” energy. Makes sense when you think about how much of a wet dream the post-9/11 circle jerk was (is) for conservatives. They’re trying to recreate the same 2002 Republican, plastic-patriot distraction machine again.
I don’t think it’s gonna work as well because people could afford to eat Big Macs everyday back then. No joke, the economic situation is so dire I’m saving up to treat myself and my boyfriend to a fancy dinner date…
The dinner is at fucking Waffle House
For what it’s worth, this is how Google maps has always worked. Use Google maps in China and you’ll notice that borders are in different places, HK,
TibetBhutan, the whole China sea, those are within China’s borders. It’s the same with Russia, crimea is just part of Russia if you use Google maps in Russia. If your country recognizes different borders or different names for places, that’s what Google shows you in your country. It’s basically either that or they can’t operate in that country, so they don’t really have a choice if they want to exist in that region.HK and Tibet are part of China in all maps. Did you mean Taiwan?
Well yeah, as of 6 years ago, after China invaded with military force, HK has been recognized as part of China on all maps. But Google showed it as part of China even before then.
And then yeah, I just remembered the wrong name, it was the border of Tibet/Bhutan that are in dispute, so parts of Bhutan display as Chinese territory.
Thanks for catching that.
HK was handed back to PRC in 1997, there was a ceremony and everything. Just because it was stolen by the British for sometime doesn’t mean it isn’t Chinese. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handover_of_Hong_Kong
A border dispute between Bhutan and China isn’t something exceptional, Wikipedia has a list of border disputes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_territorial_disputes your country might have some of its own
I never said it was exceptional, quite the opposite, I’m saying many countries have border disputes.
Interesting that you don’t seem to care about my other examples, Gaza or Crimea. Got a soft spot for China?
What a weird response. I was addressing your comment. You didn’t mention Palestine -all of it is Palestine FYI, Israel is just another Crusader state- and Crimea should be returned to the Crimean Tatars, both Slavic peoples are invaders.
But no, you would rather play the Sinophobia and Yellow Perilism card and assume that I receive Xi bucks. What a day! I didn’t mention my own country’s border disputes with its neighbors either! Didn’t see it necessary to educate you on the matter.
What a weird response. I was addressing your comment. You didn’t mention Palestine.
Oh whoops, it must have been a different post in this thread that I mentioned Gaza.
you would rather play the Sinophobia and Yellow Perilism card and assume that I receive Xi bucks.
I’ve said nothing of the sort. That sounds like deflection.
Could someone explain to me why are people irritated by this? I’m a foreigner.
Because the president should have no say in naming geographic locations that have long agreed upon names. And it’s a waste of money to have to replace all the maps and books with updated names.
There’s also no reason for Google to change anything. The US government has no power to make Google use this new name instead of the widely agreed upon name.
It’s a nod to the fact that if Trump says jump google will say “how high?” And no one with any sense likes that bigot.
And it’s a waste of money to have to replace all the maps and books with updated names.
Who prints the books? They probably made a big contribution to Trump
That actually explains this stupidity doesn’t it …
Because it’s a corporation bending over to the whims of a government trying to erase the name of a geographic place.
Time to stop using Google
