As Google Maps Renames Neighborhoods, Residents Fume • Hacker News Board

Re: As Google Maps Renames Neighborhoods, Residents Fume

#41

Post by toomanybeersies » Thu, Aug 02, 2018, 1:05 PM UTC

sonnyblarney wrote: post #3

Because of the power of mind share, Google has the power to control borders. The border between Israel and the West Bank is an odd one. 'Both sides' have their view of it. But if 7 Billion people on planet earth grow up seeing one version of the border, it's what they will come to believe as 'true' and effectively support - particularly those in modern nations that might have influence. China is aware of this and the…

This isn't unique to China, or to Israel and Palestine.

There's also Ukraine and Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, Cambodia and Thailand, India and Pakistan, and a whole swathe of territorial claims in other places. Borders, especially when not naturally delineated by something like a river, are messy things.

Re: As Google Maps Renames Neighborhoods, Residents Fume

#42

Post by raverbashing » Thu, Aug 02, 2018, 1:11 PM UTC

> Yet how Google arrives at its names in maps is often mysterious. The company declined to detail how some place names came about, though some appear to have resulted from mistakes by researchers, rebrandings by real estate agents — or just outright fiction.

So if they made a mistake they can't own up to it (like the Fiskhorn one)?

Re: As Google Maps Renames Neighborhoods, Residents Fume

#43

Post by cbnotfromthere » Thu, Aug 02, 2018, 1:17 PM UTC

throwaway123124 wrote: post #37

Google does a lot of weird things with their maps, some of them aren't accidental. Here's my local anecdote: I live in Thessaloniki, Macedonia (the region, not the country), Greece. In our city there's a bus station called "Bus Station Macedonia". Funded in 1952, long before the name conflict became a thing, it was named that way because it was servicing the region of Macedonia in Greece (it's an intercity bus statio…

"Macedonia (FYROM, the country) [...], despite their nationalist"

You say nationalist as if that's something wrong, even forbidden. Greece itself is being run by nationalist governments since decades (disregarding their political color). Austria is run nowadays by a nationalist government. Heck, the US is run by Trump, who is a nationalist.

"and expansionist government"

FYROM has never ever even hinted they, a 2.1 million people tiny nation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_Republic_o...), have any territorial request on Greece, an 11.2 million people nation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Greece). As Greece is part of both the EU and NATO, the idea of an expansionist FYROM is pure and simply ridiculous.

Re: As Google Maps Renames Neighborhoods, Residents Fume

#44

Post by bumholio » Thu, Aug 02, 2018, 1:19 PM UTC

smallnamespace wrote: post #16

bumholio wrote: post #14

> named his new publishing start-up Fishkorn this year after seeing the name on Google Maps. “It rolls off the tongue,” he said And there you have it, the exact same process that gave rise to all toponyms. It's debatable if Google has a fault for unwittingly altering a random walk. Your older Fiskhorn is no more 'right' than my new Fishkorn, and in many ways worse. If consensus forms, by whatever means, that's what's…

> If consensus forms, by whatever means, that's what's right. Seems a bit strange that you combined an absolute prescriptivist stance ('what's right') in support of an absolute descriptivist one. It's not logically self-consistent: what if a consensus forms that your view here is wrong?

There is no inconsistency, just a missing set of quotes around "right" - I hold there is no right or wrong in this matter. I don't reject the right of the people living in the area to try to influence the concensus - they might have even a financial stake in imposing "Lakeview Heights" over "East End Projects". But do they have a fundamental right to self name?

Re: As Google Maps Renames Neighborhoods, Residents Fume

#45

Post by bcoates » Thu, Aug 02, 2018, 1:21 PM UTC

Heroically buried lede 80% of the way down:

The East Cut name originated from a neighborhood nonprofit group in San Francisco that residents voted to create in 2015 to clean and secure the area. The nonprofit paid $68,000 to a “brand experience design company” to rebrand the district. [...] and one of the East Cut nonprofit’s board members is a Google employee.

Inverted pyramid is for those other newspapers I guess

Re: As Google Maps Renames Neighborhoods, Residents Fume

#46

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Aug 02, 2018, 1:22 PM UTC

antoncohen wrote: post #32

Why is this Google's fault? I walk through The East Cut nearly every day, and I admit I was confused by the rebranding. But it wasn't done by Google. There are people cleaning the sidewalks in East Cut shirts, banners that say East Cut, real estate companies that call it East Cut. It would be a little weird if Google ignored the name. Yes, "The East Cut" is a strange name. But that area as never part of South Beach (…

[deleted]

Re: As Google Maps Renames Neighborhoods, Residents Fume

#47

Post by teh_klev » Thu, Aug 02, 2018, 1:23 PM UTC

paidleaf wrote: post #35

sonnyblarney wrote: post #3

Because of the power of mind share, Google has the power to control borders. The border between Israel and the West Bank is an odd one. 'Both sides' have their view of it. But if 7 Billion people on planet earth grow up seeing one version of the border, it's what they will come to believe as 'true' and effectively support - particularly those in modern nations that might have influence. China is aware of this and the…

> China is aware of this and they control any maps their citizens will ever see. Everyone is aware of it. Maps have always been political. Maps and borders are political creations. Why is it that whenever a controversial topic comes up, people always bring up china? Every HN thread that has a controversial topic, someone always sneaks in a reference to china? > "Of course all that ocean between Philippines and Vietna…

> The issue with maps has always existed.

As an amusing aside, and whilst not wishing to introduce flammable politics into this discussion, there's a funny thing that goes on whenever the topic of the Scottish Independence debate arises in the media or on social media. It usually concerns the Scottish border between Scotland and England and usually heads along the lines of "rebuilding Hadrian's Wall" to keep us pesky Scots out of the rUK (or whatever the reason de-jour is) and is often repeated by unionists (and journalists) far south of the border who've likely never set foot in Scotland.

Little do they realise (or they do and are playing along with the usual lazy stereotypes and tropes about Scotland) that Hadrian's Wall doesn't track along the Scottish border and is in fact up to 70 miles south of the border (at the eastern end). So they unwittingly in their minds donated a decent chunk of the north east of England to Scotland come independence day. Well, thank you :)

So yes, people's ideas about maps and where borders lie are issues everywhere, not just in China.

Re: As Google Maps Renames Neighborhoods, Residents Fume

#48

Post by DanAndersen » Thu, Aug 02, 2018, 1:37 PM UTC

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #30

sonnyblarney wrote: post #3

Because of the power of mind share, Google has the power to control borders. The border between Israel and the West Bank is an odd one. 'Both sides' have their view of it. But if 7 Billion people on planet earth grow up seeing one version of the border, it's what they will come to believe as 'true' and effectively support - particularly those in modern nations that might have influence. China is aware of this and the…

It can be helpful to look at a map of the world with no borders drawn on it and remember that (apart from natural boundaries such as oceans) border lines are entirely arbitrary with no inherent meaning. And also to look at past maps of the world when the borders looked quite different.

With that mindset, what makes oceans "natural boundaries" with any meaning? It's all just collections of atoms that humans socially assign meaning to.

Re: As Google Maps Renames Neighborhoods, Residents Fume

#49

Post by stevehawk » Thu, Aug 02, 2018, 1:45 PM UTC

deanCommie wrote: post #27

sonnyblarney wrote: post #3

Because of the power of mind share, Google has the power to control borders. The border between Israel and the West Bank is an odd one. 'Both sides' have their view of it. But if 7 Billion people on planet earth grow up seeing one version of the border, it's what they will come to believe as 'true' and effectively support - particularly those in modern nations that might have influence. China is aware of this and the…

This problem didn't start with Google: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20030822-00/?p=...

MS also hit this issue with Pakistan and India regarding Kashmir.

Re: As Google Maps Renames Neighborhoods, Residents Fume

#50

Post by larkeith » Thu, Aug 02, 2018, 1:50 PM UTC

antoncohen wrote: post #32

Why is this Google's fault? I walk through The East Cut nearly every day, and I admit I was confused by the rebranding. But it wasn't done by Google. There are people cleaning the sidewalks in East Cut shirts, banners that say East Cut, real estate companies that call it East Cut. It would be a little weird if Google ignored the name. Yes, "The East Cut" is a strange name. But that area as never part of South Beach (…

It's somewhat problematic when Google starts to become an arbitrator of real-world boundaries, as there is functionally no oversight or recourse for those affected. Google was not appointed by the residents, is not incentivized to avoid damaging changes, and is functionally impossible to hold responsible - they're an opaque monolith to anyone who tries to effect change or revert their decisions, and their black box-esque tendencies make it impossible to know the policies or algorithms that determine their actions, making it infeasible to work around or prevent behaviors with a negative impact.

While in this case the impacts are fairly minor (with the exception of the border incident mentioned), this article is emblematic of the greater problem with tech giants in the information era: They cannot be regulated, managed, or held responsible for their behaviors, and have gained - and continue to gain - nigh-unprecedented influence over a staggering number of aspects our daily lives, without being chosen to do so by the people affected.