7 ms·
Google redraws the borders on maps depending on who’s looking (2020)
- supertrope 3y agoWindows 95 was almost banned by India because the time zone picker map drew Kashmir in Pakistan. https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/how-eight-pixels-cost-microsoft-millions/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/how-eight-pixels-cos... The People’s Republic of China also took offense to the operating system. https://www.nytimes.com/1996/09/30/business/offending-software-pulled-from-china.html https://www.nytimes.com/1996/09/30/business/offending-softwa...
- i_k_k 3y agoAnd India actually suspended Al Jazeera for the same reason. https://time.com/3832585/india-al-jazeera-suspended-kashmir-dispute-maps/ https://time.com/3832585/india-al-jazeera-suspended-kashmir-...
- tycho-newman 3y agoNations today are little more than the elite's formalized control over capital and labor. We are better off without nations.
- 1984joebiden 3y ago[flagged]
- flangola7 3y ago[flagged]
- 1984joebiden 3y ago[flagged]
- hnfong 3y agoHobbes, how did you get a time traveling reddit account? (For the uninitiated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract#Thomas_Hobbes'_Leviathan_(1651) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract#Thomas_Hobbes'... )
- nathan_compton 3y agoYeah, then we'd be individuals formally controlled by capital as labor.
- euos 3y agoThat’s exactly what Russia is trying to do to my people. Erase language, identity and such.
- kortex 3y agoThis take is so hot it gives off x-ray blackbody radiation.
- bannedbybros 3y ago[dead]
- pridkett 3y agoIt’s pretty obvious why: Country 1 has a law saying that incorrect maps are illegal and Area A is part of country 1. Country 2 has a law saying that incorrect maps are illegal and Area A is part of country 2. If you want to do business in both countries you have to play by their local rules. Which means showing the boundaries as that country defines it while within that country.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- TheBlight 3y agoIMO, it exemplifies what I see as a new emergent trend of no shared realities.
- nathan_compton 3y agoIt is funny to call boundaries on a map a "reality." They are almost a perfect example of a purely fantastical notion. It isn't as if people are disagreeing about the charge of the electron.
- TheBlight 3y agoNational borders are very real to most nations. Similarly, someone's specific plot of real estate feels very real to them as well. You may not always be able to see them but you can't always see an electron either. That doesn't make them any less "real."
- nathan_compton 3y agoAbsolutely absurd. Boundaries, whether national or those of personal property, are absolutely and clearly social conventions and have no reality outside of social convention. I can't believe I have underline this point. We can argue about the utility of these social conventions, even about whether they constitute some kind of ideal reality, but in both cases they clearly fail to rise to the level of observable, objective reality. If all signs of human beings vanished, aliens arriving at earth could not tell where one state ended and another began even if the idea made sense to them because borders are not part of reality. At no time in history have national borders ever been a universally shared reality and frankly, they could only be such by coincidence, not as a reflection of any genuine physical state of affairs beyond the state of mind of every human on earth.
- sn_master 3y agoBack in the day, Microsoft figured it was easier to simply erase all the borders. https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20030822-00/?p=42823 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20030822-00/?p=42...
- linusg789 3y agohttps://ghostarchive.org/archive/IuG0R https://ghostarchive.org/archive/IuG0R
- grishka 3y agoAnother "fun" thing: it is illegal in Russia for maps to show "wrong" borders and that, of course, includes the border with Ukraine. According to Russian constitution amendments of last year, the four regions of Ukraine and Crimea should be shown as part of Russia. At least two of Russian mapping services, Yandex maps and 2gis, did the strangest thing last year: they stopped showing borders AT ALL. If you click on anything in one of the disputed regions, the address would not include a country either.
- cvccvroomvroom 3y agoRussia is a pariah state like North Korea. There's no legal business to be done in either country.
- thunderbong 3y agoA thought came to me after reading all the comments - Say there's a country which wants this from Google, but they're are not sufficient users of those maps there. Does Google then overrule that country's request?