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Stop using app icons for political activism

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41–50 of 265 posts

Re: Stop using app icons for political activism

#41
post #27
post #13

Anyone got examples? What are we talking about here? Rainbow flags? Ukrainian flags? BLM colors? The GNU logo?

CleanMyMac put a Ukrainian flag in my toolbar and I promptly uninstalled CleanMyMac and cancelled my subscription. I was already using AppCleaner (OSS?) for most uninstalls anyways.

For context, CleanMyMac is based in Kyiv

Re: Stop using app icons for political activism

#42
Apart from the points that the author makes I dislike the disproportionate political activisim because it's just plain cringe and arrogant.

When it comes from a multi billion dollar giant it's still annoying but more understandable that a giant organisation with thousands of people will have a lot going in it.

But when a dude behind a $2.95 "NFT chat bot for your grandma's crypto portfolio" app wants to do it, it's something else.

They need to find another avenue to express their political ideas rather than letting it bleed into an unrelated product.

There's something to be said about having some tact and knowing your place and where you stand. If you ship a little flashlight app on Android understand that you don't have that kind of room to attach political commentary and activisim next to it. The best thing you can do is to just be the little reliable unchanging app on someone's phone and not try to over reach.

Re: Stop using app icons for political activism

#44
post #2

How about no? If it's my app, I'll use my logo. I consider the logo an integral part of the application's identity and I should control its identity. I promise I'll do my best to make it easily and readily recognizable, regardless of it using national colors, a rainbow or shades of white, pink and blue. If you don't like it, it's your problem, not mine.

It's political advertising and, like many, I don't want any ads in my apps. Normalizing political ads in apps is a two edged sword because, even if yours are righteous, there are plenty of unsavory political movements I don't want to see ads for and they would be just as "justified" as yours because they too sincerely believe their cause is righteous (even though we would disagree).

Re: Stop using app icons for political activism

#45

I'm always confused by statements like these. You can see similar dynamics playing out on artists' social media feeds for example, where people are upset when the artist talks about politics instead of their craft. Artists, developers, and everyone else is at the end of the day still a human being, not a machine that's there only to produce the content you want to consume. Getting a useful app for free (!) and then g…

Art and politics have always been intervened, and there are many political artists (like Bono, Sting, etc) that made it their gimmick to raise their voice on every political subject that triggers them. That is ok, people got used to it and it has become part of their personality.

But if a defragmentation tool suddently rubs some "Free Tibet" activism into your face by changing their app logo and prompting a message, one can rightfully wonder what the developer is trying to achieve aside from alienating part of the userbase.

Re: Stop using app icons for political activism

#46
post #4

Pretty funny that this is getting so much traction on the (recognized) Juneteenth holiday during Pride month. Tell us how you really feel…

What the hell is a Juneteenth?

It's African American's name for the day slavery effectively ended and as of last year(?) a federal holiday.

Re: Stop using app icons for political activism

#47
post #19
post #2

How about no? If it's my app, I'll use my logo. I consider the logo an integral part of the application's identity and I should control its identity. I promise I'll do my best to make it easily and readily recognizable, regardless of it using national colors, a rainbow or shades of white, pink and blue. If you don't like it, it's your problem, not mine.

> If you don't like it, it's your problem, not mine. I may be old fashined, but I remember it being considered a problem for the seller if a potential customer does not like offered product.

So your saying everyone should be able to demand a custom app icon that fits their design preferences, presumably for free?

Re: Stop using app icons for political activism

#48

I'm always confused by statements like these. You can see similar dynamics playing out on artists' social media feeds for example, where people are upset when the artist talks about politics instead of their craft. Artists, developers, and everyone else is at the end of the day still a human being, not a machine that's there only to produce the content you want to consume. Getting a useful app for free (!) and then g…

It's not the same. Icons are partly a functional component, rather than being purely aesthetic. If I just can't find the app I'm looking for due to there being something wrong with the icon, I certainly get annoyed.

For people who identify things primarily by color rather than shape, I can totally see a temporary palette swap causing that. Others might go mostly by the shape, and care less. (I'm one of those people, though the way Google's apps changed colors three years ago was an exception: they basically ended up applying the principles of camouflage to break the shapes in a way that completely destroyed my ability to distinguish them at a glance.)

And then there are people who just go by spatial location, or by the text, and couldn't tell you the first thing about the icon itself. I assume those people would instead be driven up the walls if the icons were re-arranged automatically by app popularity, or if apps were constantly being renamed.

> Getting a useful app for free (!)

The author did say these were "likely" apps they had paid for.

Re: Stop using app icons for political activism

#49
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you don't like it, it's your problem, not mine. I may be old fashined, but I remember it being considered a problem for the seller if a potential customer does not like offered product.

So your saying everyone should be able to demand a custom app icon that fits their design preferences, presumably for free?

No, they’re saying consumers are able to stop using your app if you inject politics into it, and some percentage will.

No right or wrong involved, this means less money for you.

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