Summary
Rep. Dan Crenshaw criticized Apple Maps for not renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, as mandated by Trump’s recent executive order titled “Restoring Names that Honor American Greatness.”
Crenshaw’s complaint reflects broader conservative frustration, as tech platforms and the global community continue to use the original name.
Critics compare the move to past nationalist gestures like renaming french fries “freedom fries,” accusing conservatives of embracing identity politics and culture wars despite their political dominance.
The name change is unlikely to gain international traction.
The government can fuck right off with their Newspeak.
This is a huge distraction to get you worked up about a meaningless name change. Elon is heiling on stage like an edgy teen for further drama. Meanwhile EO are signed en masse and action is taken by the new administration. This time Trump and his cronies came well prepared with a plan.
Who says I’m worked up? You wrote a whole paragraph, I wrote a quip.
This is not about you.
Just because something has a purpose doesn’t mean it has succeeded at it. 👍
It’s one of the most upvoted posts on Lemmy at the moment. This is getting attention.
As someone who worked in mapping, many people don’t realize how much this kind of BS actually comes up.
The map you see in Google / Apple maps isn’t the map the whole world sees. What you see is what’s culturally / legally appropriate for viewers in your region.
For example, in parts of India it’s legally required that Jammu and Kashmir be displayed as being part of India on their maps. On Pakistan’s maps it’s legally required to be weirdly ambiguous, with a strange open border that doesn’t properly close. The rest of the world gets dotted lines indicating it’s complicated.
For most of the world the body of water between Korea, Japan and Vladivostok is labeled as “The Sea of Japan”, but users in Korea will see “The East Sea”. Is the body of water around Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, UAE, etc. the Persian Gulf or the Arabian Gulf? Depends on where you are when you ask that question.
This even has a strange effect when all the countries involved agree that a certain geographic feature is the border, but that geographic feature is a river. Some rivers, especially ones like the Amazon river keep shifting. Sediment piles up, erosion happens, and the river shifts. The river is still the border, but now someone has to go in and adjust the political border to match the river’s new position.
So, if Trump does do something official to rename the Gulf of Mexico, the online mapping companies (and any offline ones that are left) will probably follow the rule and rename it… for their American users. The rest of the world will still see it as the Gulf of Mexico. It will just be yet another one of those funny exceptions the companies have to keep track of while displaying maps for a certain subset of users.
The rest of the world will still see it as the Gulf of America.
of Mexico** I guess?
Er, yeah, that.
Thanks btw, really informative!
Sorry about the ttrypo.
I forgot that apple was a department under the president
Tim Apple personally donated 1 million dollars to Trump
I feel sorry for Wozniak… Watching the company he helped build turn into what it has.
Probably a good time to try and sell maps and globes to red school districts.
You know some friend of the administration already took that spot. It was probably their idea in the first place.
I’m waiting to hear what they want to do with New Mexico
I feel like New Mexico would rather secede and join Mexico before they bow to the administration.
Rename it to New America then in 4 years whine about New America trying to steal the light from old America because Democrats
Only after they deport all the new Mexicans
Small dick energy.
Is this what small government looks like? I thought these guys were all about reducing regulations and allowing businesses to do as they please, free from government restrictions.
I thought these guys were all about reducing regulations
Did you really? Be honest.
You don’t understand. They should be free of your restrictions, you should be bound by their restrictions.
Whoever obeys Nazis, I will boycott your platform. Plain and simple.
Google also didn’t. Oof.
That post also prompted me to check Google maps, and I got Gulf of Mexico, thankfully. However I’m sure there will soon be a US version with the proper denomination so that the new masters of the land can be placated.
Cause most google users aren’t americans and the mental illness of a few sex criminals would disrupt their service.
Users with other languages will see a different name anyway.
It doesn’t matter who their customers are, Google is a us based company.
However, hopefully they are able to depose, delay, deny this ridiculousness
Executive orders mean shit, show me all the freedom fries in american stores.
As a Trans person I feel soooo bad /s
I couldn’t care less what the name of that gulf is, however, Trump is right when he says that the US is the ONLY country that pumps money into that entire region. We protect it, monitor it, and it all comes out of American tax dollars. Mexico is just riding our coat tails. I can see why he’d want to change it. Also, the name “Gulf of America” technically includes Mexico…
We freeload off of Mexico. They give us about $160 billion more dollars in goods and services than we give them. They give us about $467 billion worth of stuff, and in return we give them about $309 billion in stuff. In exchange we mostly give them IOUs and other pieces of paper.
Oh, and that’s before we talk about the billions of dollars we steal from the Mexican government. Think of all the talented workers that move from Mexico to the US. That’s millions of people raised and educated on the backs of Mexican taxpayers, who come to the US and never contribute a penny to the Mexican economy.
The US is a giant leech sucking the Mexican economy dry.
Pretty sure it’s called “Gulf of How The Fuck Does This Lower Grocery Prices”
If Apple changed the name to “Gulf of How The Fuck Does This Lower Grocery Prices” for a day in response I’d start using Apple Maps.
I’ll be happy with companies ignoring this to set the precedent that these executive orders are toothless.
Fuck, I honestly thought this was the Onion. Somebody get me out of this timeline. I withdraw consent for this simulation!
Hey everyone, I just signed a lemmy order changing the name of maralago to gaping jizz hole. Enjoy!
Time for everyone to start burner Open Street Maps accounts!
Thank you for your service, sir/madam. You’re already a better executive than some presidents I can think of, thinking of what the people want.
As the first matter of business I need to immediately address, my resignation. No one man is equipped to weild the power of the lemexcutive for much longer than I have.
Farewell lemmings. Until we shit post together again.
I feel like an OSM edit is in order.
Please don’t vandalise OSM.
For people always calling the others “snowflakes” and “easily triggered”, they sure do have a thin skin.
Wait until iOS Auto Corrects them typing Gulf of America to Gulf of Mexico but only after they hit send.
Maybe, but this is all a distraction from the actions that matter. They don’t want to debate the anti-trans stuff or the immigration stuff, which is objectively bad. They want to debate people not going with a made up name for a thing, which has no objectivity. The longer they can argue about this the less time there is to discuss anything important.
Its not just being thin skinned. It’s a strategy of distraction.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were so sensitive” is my response to these types IRL.
what’s funny is Trump didn’t directly change the name. that takes time. the relevant naming-people have to take it up and formally do it. All Trump did was order them to, and, uh, that only affects goverment things.
Everybody else, Apple included, are going to be using the familiar name. because Trump is a moron.
They’ll follow suit. Apple is not the company people think it is. Tim was at the information along with all the other oligarchy. I know people well make excuses like he had to and blah blah blah. But no he did not. This a a openly gay man who chose to go support people who hate him why because he loves money more.
Well yeah, you don’t get into his position by not loving money more than anything else. Hell, even the infamous George Soros if you actually look at his philanthropy it’s basically “a more tolerant and open society is better for capital”
Don’t count on it, Apple and Google were both at inauguration
I don’t know… Isn’t naming (and even country boundaries) already localized based on where the users are? Isn’t a possible scenario that Apple and others could show Gulf of America to US users and Gulf of Mexico to everyone else without even spending too much effort?
Yeah there’s already support to name things differently based on your locale. If you have an English locale you see “Germany”. Inside German it’s called Deutschland and if you’re in a Spanish speaking place it’s Alemania.
You could probably distinguish between en-us and en-gb to have different names in the USA and UK.
So yeah I totally think it’s possible.
I meant something even more radical than translating language. This is Google maps changing borders for disputed territories depending on what side of the dispute the user is: https://theweek.com/speedreads/451127/google-maps-changes-chinas-borders-based-viewers-locations .
I imagine Apple has similar policies too where they adhere to local regulations or just don’t want to piss their users in any country, so they just show everyone what the want to see.
So yes, they do have the tools to do it and on top of that they also have a consolidate tradition of doing it.
Every accusation
It’s always projection with these people.
