It's unlikely that it was deliberately done for evil reasons. However it contributes to a misunderstanding that may in some way favor richer countries, and tha

It's unlikely that it was deliberately done for evil reasons. However it contributes to a misunderstanding that may in some way favor richer countries, and that could be a reason why nobody's trying very hard to focus kids' exposure on more accurate maps. The mechanism I'm alluding to is a sense that "this place is very big, and so it's reasonable that it controls more than other places." It's not a highly-developed intellectual analysis, but more of a gut-level conception that informs casual interpretation of news and events.