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Presumably this is a big company problem of playing politics safely: They didn't want to take a position on the N country disputes out there by deciding which c

by B-Con 2y ago

Presumably this is a big company problem of playing politics safely: They didn't want to take a position on the N country disputes out there by deciding which country code gets which flag and furthermore don't want to acknowledge which country politics are even disputed and so don't support the rest.

paulgb 2y ago
Microsoft has at least one maps product (Bing Maps), and at one time had an encyclopedia with an atlas. You’d think they’d have a way of dealing with disputed territory.
- CamouflagedKiwi 2y ago
  I'm sure they do have a way of dealing with it in Bing Maps - I assume they can display borders differently depending on the country of origin (I think that's the common approach), but that has zero technological overlap with the presence or absence of Unicode flag codepoints in a system-level font.
- makeitdouble 2y ago
  Getting out of these issues as fast as they can could be the learning they got from these products.
aleph_minus_one 2y ago
> They didn't want to take a position on the N country disputes out there by deciding which country code gets which flag Why not simply collect all the prevalent "stances" on the disputed topics, and give the user to choose on each stance individually (or for a better user experience: create some presets of "stances that often occur together", which the user can use to activate multiple stances at once).
- mschuster91 2y ago
  Some of the target countries have laws on the books with teeth regarding their individual disputes.
  - throw16180339 2y ago
    India is one of them.
- Alex-Programs 2y ago
  That'd be amusing. When you first install Windows, you get... "Is the island to the east of mainland China (also known as Taiwan, or Chinese Taipei) part of the People's Republic of China?" "What is the legal status of Gibraltar?" "Who ought to have won the Cod Wars?" And on, and on... Alternatively, have your pick of "Western (standard)" "Western (tankie)" "Chinese (the big one)" "Chinese (the small, disputed one)" "American (pro-Iceland)" "American (pro-UK, for the purpose of the Cod Wars)" "British (Still Irritated Over Suez)" "British ('What's Suez?')" Your idea is quite sensible, of course, but you could make it quite absurd if you liked. Perhaps I'll put something like this together one evening. I'm sure there are more silly disagreements to include than the ones I know of as a brit.
- justinclift 2y ago
  Heh, hopefully browsers wouldn't be able to query the user answers to that info as it would be extremely fingerprint/identifying.
Dylan16807 2y ago
I don't think there are any meaningful disputes over multiple flags on a specific code? Having some extra non-conflicting flags doesn't disrupt anything, it just leads to some people being petty.

by B-Con 2y ago

paulgb 2y ago

Microsoft has at least one maps product (Bing Maps), and at one time had an encyclopedia with an atlas. You’d think they’d have a way of dealing with disputed territory.

CamouflagedKiwi 2y ago
I'm sure they do have a way of dealing with it in Bing Maps - I assume they can display borders differently depending on the country of origin (I think that's the common approach), but that has zero technological overlap with the presence or absence of Unicode flag codepoints in a system-level font.
makeitdouble 2y ago
Getting out of these issues as fast as they can could be the learning they got from these products.

aleph_minus_one 2y ago

> They didn't want to take a position on the N country disputes out there by deciding which country code gets which flag Why not simply collect all the prevalent "stances" on the disputed topics, and give the user to choose on each stance individually (or for a better user experience: create some presets of "stances that often occur together", which the user can use to activate multiple stances at once).

mschuster91 2y ago
Some of the target countries have laws on the books with teeth regarding their individual disputes.
- throw16180339 2y ago
  India is one of them.
Alex-Programs 2y ago
That'd be amusing. When you first install Windows, you get... "Is the island to the east of mainland China (also known as Taiwan, or Chinese Taipei) part of the People's Republic of China?" "What is the legal status of Gibraltar?" "Who ought to have won the Cod Wars?" And on, and on... Alternatively, have your pick of "Western (standard)" "Western (tankie)" "Chinese (the big one)" "Chinese (the small, disputed one)" "American (pro-Iceland)" "American (pro-UK, for the purpose of the Cod Wars)" "British (Still Irritated Over Suez)" "British ('What's Suez?')" Your idea is quite sensible, of course, but you could make it quite absurd if you liked. Perhaps I'll put something like this together one evening. I'm sure there are more silly disagreements to include than the ones I know of as a brit.
justinclift 2y ago
Heh, hopefully browsers wouldn't be able to query the user answers to that info as it would be extremely fingerprint/identifying.

Dylan16807 2y ago

I don't think there are any meaningful disputes over multiple flags on a specific code? Having some extra non-conflicting flags doesn't disrupt anything, it just leads to some people being petty.