[HN Gopher] Stop using app icons for political activism
___________________________________________________________________
Stop using app icons for political activism
Author : efitz
Score : 73 points
Date : 2022-06-20 15:59 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.efitz.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.efitz.net)
| otachack wrote:
| You can consider not using the product? If you can't stomach a
| temporary icon change, which I'm guessing has to do with either
| Pride or Juneteenth, then I'm sure the app organization and
| society wouldn't mind you finding an alternative.
|
| The latter has become a federal holiday so it's not exactly
| activism IMO to show alliance with that.
| ohCh6zos wrote:
| Activism may be the wrong word when something is dictated from
| the top down, but it seems similar enough in all but
| origination.
| [deleted]
| drewbug01 wrote:
| The author didn't bother to state which political statements they
| were upset about; neither did they bother to say something like
| "all of them," which would have been trivial. So we are left to
| guess which political activism they find annoying.
|
| Given the timing, there's a very good chance that it's related to
| Pride month here in the US. It seems even more probable when you
| consider the context: very few companies change their logos for
| Juneteenth (the other contender), but many companies slap a
| rainbow on it for Pride.
|
| So: odds are, the author is upset about having LGBTQ "activism"
| pushed on their devices.
|
| I would invite everyone to remember this the next time someone
| wants a "politics-free" workspace. Specifically, remember that a
| vague assertion that LGBTQ people _exist_ (a rainbow, on a logo),
| is what some folks consider "political."
| sumthinprofound wrote:
| I've always set custom icons using a consistent theme in my
| android phone's app launcher for years.
| borplk wrote:
| 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.
| rbanffy wrote:
| 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.
| xisukar wrote:
| >If it's my app, I'll use my logo.
|
| You might own the app's code but if the user paid for the app,
| they're entitled to not wanting their screen to become some
| billboard to The Current Thing(tm). Buy a few billboards and
| airtime if you feel you should shove your political beliefs and
| opinions down everyone's throat. With this behavior, you're the
| representation of everything wrong with corporate political
| activism and the tech industry at large: You're the app's
| developer, and for some reason you think you know more than the
| user.
| lupire wrote:
| If you do that you a paid customer, you are perpetuating a bait
| and switch fraud.
|
| If you are doing that in a free app, OK, but you are going to
| get bad reviews from the users you vandalized, and might be
| violating the advertising/spam rules of the platform your are
| distributing on.
| Banana699 wrote:
| Good. I love it when true believers show their true colors.
|
| When your fashionable beliefs fall out of fashion, it will be
| your problem soon enough. Just don't cry about oppression then.
| xisukar wrote:
| >When your fashionable beliefs fall out of fashion, it will
| be your problem soon enough. Just don't cry about oppression
| then.
|
| The righteousness of these individuals make them blind to the
| fact the pendulum swings back and forth.
| Jcowell wrote:
| I mean let's be clear here, we are taking about a symbol
| that's for the backing of the rights of a group of people.
| There would be large problems for society as a whole if the
| pendulum swings the other way.
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| 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).
| rbanffy wrote:
| I'm completely fine with your right to dump those unsavory
| apps. If enough of us do, they may chose to, at least, hide
| to wherever they came out from.
| [deleted]
| canadianwriter wrote:
| Yup - private companies/app makers can do as they please. You
| consented to them doing as they wish.
|
| The choice is simple, if you don't like it, just stop using the
| app. There are probably tons of alternatives.
| mwint wrote:
| The part about it not being your problem is fantasy. When the
| author of this article leaves a bad review, it becomes your
| problem.
|
| You are unlikely to be able to pursue the author and force them
| to remove their review, so your choices are to not change the
| icon, or change the icon and accept the bad review. That's
| certainly your problem.
| idealmedtech wrote:
| And here we see that even this discussion is political; a
| summary rejection of the premise of the article! At the end
| of the day, we're all people, and a lot of what we are boils
| down to politics. You can't exist outside of it.
| cato_the_elder wrote:
| > How about no? If it's my app, I'll use my logo.
|
| Sure, but then I'll make sure that I won't use your apps if I
| can.
|
| And we have the right to complain about these things as much as
| we want. It's your PR problem, not ours.
| aaomidi wrote:
| cato_the_elder wrote:
| > I would actively not hire you if I saw that in your feeds
| fwiw
|
| I wouldn't hire you as well. Having a functional and
| meritocratic workplace is much more important to me than
| virtue signalling.
|
| Also, your comment is clearly a personal attack and against
| HN guidelines.
| aaomidi wrote:
| That was a royal you, not to the OP. the you is the
| fictional person in that example.
| zx10rse wrote:
| I would love to know what your superiors think about your
| hiring process in your company. Where did you said you work
| ? G. ?
| spacemanmatt wrote:
| > How about no?
|
| Ok, I'll take it. It's your app. I rather not wear the clown
| shoes when it comes to understanding property and expression
| rights, but also etiquette in app/business spaces.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| > If it's my app
|
| Not picking on you specifically, because this attitude is
| extremely common among software developers these days, but I
| think this mentality of treating software running on users'
| machines as "yours" rather than "theirs" is at the core of a
| lot of problems with the modern software industry.
|
| Software should serve the interests of its users, not its
| developers. The advent of ubiquitous internet connectivity,
| automatic updates, and business models based around selling ads
| rather than selling software have changed this dynamic somewhat
| and I think that's really unfortunate.
| rbanffy wrote:
| > Software should serve the interests of its users, not its
| developers.
|
| It is my belief the software is serving the betterment of
| society if it offends the people who don't approve my
| activism ;-)
|
| More important than serving the individual users is serving
| society as a whole.
| throwntoday wrote:
| Yes virtue signalling serves society by identifying
| attention seekers.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| > It is my belief the software is serving the betterment of
| society if it offends the people who don't approve my
| activism ;-)
|
| When has ideological grandstanding ever been a successful
| strategy for convincing anyone of anything? Surely it would
| just further entrench the convictions of those who disagree
| with you, harming your own cause and helping theirs gain
| legitimacy in the eyes of those who are not convinced
| either way.
| aaomidi wrote:
| I disagree with this. Minds don't changed based on one
| interaction. It changed based on your observations from
| the world.
|
| Pride logos and icons in companies have made it so you
| can't "not think" of LGBT anymore for example. This is
| HUGE for a lot of people. I'll give you a specific
| example, before pride no one in Iran dared speak about
| LGBT. Now it's unavoidable when all the apps and services
| you use have a pride version.
|
| This has already lead to more acceptance privately re:
| lgbt. The next steps are pushing acceptance to welcoming
| to them "you're not going to be treated differently".
|
| It's one tool in your entire arsenal.
| barrysteve wrote:
| This just gives fuel to the Christian street preachers
| who complain about pride being shoved in their faces and
| being unable to opt-out.
|
| To oversimplify and quote Obiwan, you were supposed to
| bring balance to the force, not destroy it.
|
| There are some people you're never going to win over, and
| pushing them into a position of persecution is sadly a
| naive political move.
| aaomidi wrote:
| I legitimately don't care what the Christian preechers
| are complaining about.
|
| They're not the group I'm optimizing for, and their
| population is dropping YoY.
|
| If the existence of a group of people is triggering them
| that much, then they can go disconnect and live in
| isolation or something.
|
| No one here is, for example, calling out marriot for
| shoving bibles and Book of Mormon into my face.
|
| Christianity is constantly shoved into my face with no
| ability to opt out. They can deal with pride flags.
| barrysteve wrote:
| This is the naive blindness.
|
| There is acres of christian art and media that simply
| doesn't register for the populace. People scroll by Jude
| Law as the Young Pope on Netflix and ignore the methodist
| Christian substructure of star wars. People can be told
| via memes that ObiWan is like space jesus and it's like
| water off a duck's back.
|
| Christianity doesn't oppress people, they can't even
| identify it, when it is infront of the open eyes. People
| naturally don't even know what it is, that they reject.
| Can't describe what a priest would even say.
|
| Bibles in the marriot is a charity and mormons are
| debatably not christian at all. Joseph smith was not
| jesus, sorry.
|
| But make no mistake we all know what pride is, what lgbtq
| people want legislated and exactly how it's going to
| affect us. Our choice be damned.
| Conclusionist wrote:
| 1. You're claiming Christianity is so normalized people
| don't notice it. That's exactly the point with pride.
|
| 2. Am I reading this right? You think LGBT people and
| pride is oppressing people more than Christianity?
| voussoir wrote:
| > automatic updates
|
| This is one of the most important points of the conversation.
| The other most important point would be the difficulty /
| impossibility of reverting to an older version of the
| application on mobile systems. When you put them together you
| get users powerless on their own devices, stuck in a needless
| dilemma between keeping the application in its new, worsened
| state, or throwing away the whole thing.
|
| On my PC I download "portable" / .zip releases of software
| whenever possible, and I keep every single package. If a
| program has an update with a regression, I can just choose to
| not use it, or run it side-by-side with the older version.
|
| On Android, F-Droid serves the last couple APKs for each app,
| and I download these to my PC also. However, Android makes
| side-by-side installation difficult unless you recompile the
| app with a different package ID. If it's a closed-source app
| from the Play Store, you're screwed. I would not be surprised
| if it's impossible on iphone.
|
| So, I disable auto updates, and I ignore the boy who cries
| "important security fixes". Better luck next time.
| jansan wrote:
| > 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.
| culpable_pickle wrote:
| So your saying everyone should be able to demand a custom app
| icon that fits their design preferences, presumably for free?
| mwint wrote:
| 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.
| rbanffy wrote:
| > this means less money for you.
|
| My morals are not for sale.
| mwint wrote:
| Great! While we can argue over whether _not_ changing an
| app icon is immoral, it is your prerogative to make that
| trade off. Let's just not pretend the tradeoff doesn't
| exist.
| culpable_pickle wrote:
| > I remember it being considered a problem for the seller
| if a potential customer does not like offered product.
|
| That doesn't sound like making a informed tradeoff, that
| sounds like the adage of "The customer is always right",
| which is a very different approach to business.
|
| I highly doubt any company making a statement by changing
| their app icon hasn't considered the impact and I'm sure
| is actively watching metrics like uninstall metrics. And
| I'm sure given they're making the change they found it an
| acceptable trade off.
|
| So in short, I don't really understand what you're point
| was trying to make, unless you disagree with my premise
| that the companies made an informed decision to modify
| their app icon?
| spacemanmatt wrote:
| Sometimes the customer is wrong, and it is worth more to
| avoid them.
| rbanffy wrote:
| And this is why having a lot of low-margin, low-touch
| customers is better than a few high-margin, high-touch ones.
|
| It should always be OK to fire your customers.
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| The app might be "yours", but once you gave it to another
| person to install it on _their_ phone, you should not abuse
| their hospitality. You don 't rerrange furniture in a home
| you're visiting if you have good manners.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Then don't update the app.
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| When you invite someone for a repeat visit, you presume
| that they won't rearrange your stuff.
|
| When they arrive and you catch them in the act, the damage
| is already done. (Can applications be downgraded in the
| typical walled-garden OS environment?)
| yessirwhatever wrote:
| What's the activism angle exactly for? Do you think people on
| the fence about some issue will be swayed one way or the other?
| rbanffy wrote:
| As someone said much better than I ever could, I don't want
| to impose my values upon others, but I want to show others
| who have the same values I do they are not alone.
| zthrowaway wrote:
| What this really is, is showing political compliance. Just
| like what Italians had to do in the late 30s to prevent
| their businesses from being destroyed.
|
| How would you feel if most apps all over the App Store for
| one whole month used right wing political symbology to
| signal their compliance? I'm sure you'd get pretty angry
| about it. Try to put yourself in other's shoes, and stop
| participating in this low-effort fascism.
| fumanchux wrote:
| Saying that you're changing your logo to "show others who
| have the same values I do they are not alone" implies that
| you're expressing some very exceptional values. I struggle
| to imagine what values are best at connecting to lonely
| people through their phone homescreen.
| kube-system wrote:
| It doesn't need to change anyone's mind. A simple
| acknowledgement is reason enough. Not unlike other holidays.
| badwolf wrote:
| Happy Pride Month, I suppose.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| 100% agree with this article.
|
| Not only is it "thoughts and prayers" or Facebook filter tier
| support,
|
| Not only is it a usability and accessibility disaster,
|
| It also breaks trust between user and developer.
|
| My device is not the appropriate place for your activism.
| RC_ITR wrote:
| Pretty funny that this is getting so much traction on the
| (recognized) Juneteenth holiday during Pride month.
|
| Tell us how you really feel...
| hourago wrote:
| That is called to have a "hidden agenda".
|
| Nowadays, articles get a lot of criticism for having "an
| agenda". That has never been a bad thing, everybody one way or
| another has an agenda. Nothing wrong with that.
|
| But in that noise it has been lost the idea that "hidden
| agendas" are bad. Someone pushes for an idea, but in reality
| they are pushing for some effect that has nothing to do with
| that original idea.
|
| "Hidden agendas" are bad because make dialog, understanding and
| getting to agreements difficult if not impossible.
| proxyon wrote:
| yessirwhatever wrote:
| What the hell is a Juneteenth?
| parrellel wrote:
| It's African American's name for the day slavery effectively
| ended and as of last year(?) a federal holiday.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| It's the day that it was announced to have ended in Texas.
|
| Slavery was still practiced in Kentucky and Delaware until
| the ratification of the 13th Amendment.
| yessirwhatever wrote:
| Ok, thanks for clarifying.
| parrellel wrote:
| No problem.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| So people should hold back their opinions during specific
| celebrations or they are homophonic?
|
| That is... an insane stretch to say the least.
| RC_ITR wrote:
| No, I'm just saying that if it was a rainbow or Juneteenth
| flag that made you mad, then say that. Don't over-generalize,
| tell us how you really feel.
|
| I'm being earnest.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| I'm pretty sure they told you how they feel.
|
| Why are you assuming things not stated?
|
| How is that helpful?
|
| Also, there is a Juneteenth flag? It's a full time job to
| keep up these days.
| RC_ITR wrote:
| >I'm pretty sure they told you how they feel. Why are you
| assuming things not stated?
|
| Again, was just pointing out that this article about
| 'Political Activism' is getting a ton of traction on the
| one day of the year when we (in America) recognize the
| historical oppression of both LGBT and black people.
|
| Am I missing a trend of app icons that recognize other
| 'political' causes? Because if the author is mad about
| rainbow or Juneteenth coloring of their apps, they should
| just say _that_ and not self-censor to the point of
| ambiguity.
|
| If a bunch of apps are changing their icons to support
| random propositions, then I agree with them, but I don't
| think _that_ is what is happening.
|
| >Also, there is a Juneteenth flag? It's a full time job
| to keep up these days.
|
| Keep up with _what_ exactly (By the way, no one is asking
| you to take on this job)? Flags? Because I can
| _guarantee_ that the rate of flag-designing is multiple-
| orders of magnitude lower than it was even in the early
| 20th century.
| WalterGR wrote:
| crtasm wrote:
| Since 1997, I discover:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juneteenth_flag
| SllX wrote:
| An app that did this wouldn't stick around for very long on my
| phone either, but which apps are actually doing this?
| mrcartmeneses wrote:
| Reddit had a black logo for BLM for a while. It was nice to see
| them recognising that Black lives do actually matter, rather
| than the default position of said lives not mattering at all to
| many Americans.
| xisukar wrote:
| >It was nice to see them recognising that Black lives do
| actually matter, rather than the default position of said
| lives not mattering at all to many Americans.
|
| All lives matter!
| mwint wrote:
| [citation-needed]
| SllX wrote:
| Well that doesn't seem appropriate, but Reddit's app never
| struck me as one that was particularly respectful to its
| users or valuable to its own brand. Are there any others?
| marcodiego wrote:
| In a certain way, Free Software is political activism. Disagree
| with something? Fork it. Not using FLOSS? Contribute to one by
| using, coding, donating money or trying to make it more popular.
| Can't or don't want to do that? How about stop complaining?
| mikkergp wrote:
| It is ironic that software development has been one of the most
| politically active activities in existence, and yet somehow
| imagined as apolitical.
| thereddaikon wrote:
| That's not viable when Apple prevents you from installing
| arbitrary software on their devices. You can just say use
| Android but that is also fraught with compromises as well.
| marcodiego wrote:
| One more reason to support linux phones. And yes, I know how
| inconvenient they can be compared to other models, but people
| should make the effort or else we will always live with these
| kinds of problems.
| thereddaikon wrote:
| I'm a pinephone early adopter so you don't have to sell me
| on that. But I also know that such things are not viable
| for mass market. Pinephone works for me because I am
| technically savvy and value ownership of my device more
| than ease of use.
|
| But time and time again we've seen that the market as a
| whole will go for whatever has the lowest friction. That's
| the singular most important factor. Whatever lets people do
| that thing quickest and easiest will usually win out.
|
| So any serious and realistic discussion has to keep that in
| mind. This is why consumer protection laws are important.
| Because "people" aren't going to necessarily look out for
| their own long term best interests. And will choose the
| option that is easy today but will screw you down the road.
| marcodiego wrote:
| You're right. Thinking "people create problems for
| themselves" is egoistical, most people are not educated
| to see beyond ads, the ones who are, most don't care. The
| deepest problem with such behavior is that this
| influences industry to simply kill any support to less
| common options and such group of users (which probably
| include we two) won't get any support from major vendors.
|
| Consumer protection laws are not only important even for
| those who don't care about them. They are important
| specially because there are so many people who don't care
| about them.
| kube-system wrote:
| Well yes, if you choose not to use free software, then you
| don't get the benefits of free software.
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| Yeah, strong agree
| hourago wrote:
| > As part of that bargain, you have to identify your app visually
| so I can find it.
|
| If the problem is that apps change logos then that should be
| criticized, not activism. If the problem is with political causes
| that should be the focus, not interface. To mix both seems an
| excuse to legitimate one criticism using the other.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| It's a bit of both.
|
| Also critiquing activism is completely valid.
|
| Passionately held belief is not somehow above reproach at all
| times
| AlphaWeaver wrote:
| Something I don't see mentioned in this thread- on Android you
| can load custom icon packs. I standardize my icons (a solid
| color, outlined, version of the app logo) across all my apps, so
| I don't experience it when developers change their app icons.
|
| Using a free(er) platform like Android (compared to iOS) affords
| me this opportunity for customization.
| jp57 wrote:
| Anyone got examples? What are we talking about here? Rainbow
| flags? Ukrainian flags? BLM colors? The GNU logo?
| tobbob wrote:
| It's obviously rainbow flags etc.
| proxyon wrote:
| 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.
| Cenk wrote:
| For context, CleanMyMac is based in Kyiv
| proxyon wrote:
| I get that this adds context but I still didn't want their
| flag on my computer and their stunt guaranteed that I
| wouldn't buy another product from them
| Etheryte wrote:
| 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 getting upset over what color
| its icon is or whatnot seems absurdly entitled.
| barrysteve wrote:
| It's not for free if you're being sold a political ad. No such
| thing as a free political lunch for developers.
| jansan wrote:
| 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.
| jsnell wrote:
| 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.
| proxyon wrote:
| It's not entitled to say we own our own computers and don't
| want your political advertising on them.
| darklion wrote:
| The reality is that while you own your computer, you
| generally don't own the proprietary software on it, you
| _license_ it. That license entitles you to remarkably little
| beyond using the software as the software vendor permits.
| notriddle wrote:
| I don't think FOSS protects you from political activism.
|
| Here's what comes up on my (Fedora, obviously) machine when
| I run VIM with no filename specified:
| VIM - Vi IMproved
| version 8.2.5052
| by Bram Moolenaar et al.
| Modified by <bugzilla@redhat.com>
| Vim is open source and freely distributable
| Help poor children in Uganda!
| type :help iccf<Enter> for information
| type :q<Enter> to exit
| type :help<Enter> or <F1> for on-line help
| type :help version8<Enter> for version info
|
| According to their git history, VIM has carried uganda.txt
| since at least 2004.
|
| No technical measures exist to stop you from removing this
| call for donations, but it's more work to patch it out then
| it is to just ignore it. This makes FOSS software a pretty
| good vehicle for political activism. Not just the fact that
| organizing a hostile fork to remove a message like this one
| is too much trouble and makes you look like a jerk, but
| also because political activism is a good way to motivate
| people to write and release software for free in the first
| place, making up for how difficult it is to really monetize
| FOSS software.
| kube-system wrote:
| If you don't want it on your device, don't load it on to your
| device.
| proxyon wrote:
| That's the article.
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| Just another symptom of the users not truly having control over
| "their" devices.
|
| If you don't like the logo, swap it the application files. Oh
| wait, sources are unavailable? If you want your phone to serve
| _you_ , guess you better jump on the FLOSS bandwagon.
| thereddaikon wrote:
| I hate it when apps change long used icons for any reason. Make
| its hard to find the app. I'm still annoyed about Google changing
| the icons for all of their android suite a few revisions ago.
|
| If you have to virtue signal, there are better ways to do it than
| changing the icon.
| RicoElectrico wrote:
| Now that so many big corps change their logo colors to rainbow in
| July, I think it's no longer a strong statement. Not that it
| really was one, if certain locales were excluded from it. I guess
| ceasing business with countries which don't follow human rights
| requires too much courage.
| tonymet wrote:
| in general i would prefer to keep the political activism outside
| of our tools. It's a distraction and comes off as inauthentic
| bandwagoning . I use adblock to block any politicking I see on
| software so i can get work done
| mikkergp wrote:
| > I use adblock
|
| Ironic.
| spacemanmatt wrote:
| Net/net: -1, poor couching of an old gripe I share.
|
| I miss ResEdit and the option of using a quasi-developer utility
| to swap out icons and other assets from the "resource fork" of
| any Mac app. As a consumer, I loved how everything was
| externalized in a common format.
| yessirwhatever wrote:
| @dang: this shouldn't be flagged.
| daenz wrote:
| I have been part of a dance/art community in a past life. There's
| a prevailing belief that "the personal is political"[0], which
| basically manifests as all things (art/products/etc) being
| unambiguously imbued with your politics, because politics doesn't
| end at the public sphere.
|
| This idea became mainstream at some point, and the result is that
| we must now signal what team we're on in everything we create.
| Abstaining from this signaling just means you're either ignorant
| of the causes (best assumption) or you're on the other team
| (worst assumption).
|
| 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_personal_is_political
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Politicizing the person is something that happens to some
| people against their will.
|
| For example people don't choose to be gay, it just happens like
| being tall or having blue eyes. But in Florida there is a law
| now saying teachers can't talk about gay people in school.
| Totally still fine to talk about tall people, though.
|
| This is why "Pride Month" is a big deal but tall people month
| is not. Gay people didn't choose to become "political." But
| since they are subjected to that scrutiny, they of course want
| to stand up for themselves, and other people who value equality
| under the law want to stand up with them.
| xisukar wrote:
| >But in Florida there is a law now saying teachers can't talk
| about gay people in school.
|
| If only you weren't misrepresenting the Parental Rights in
| Education bill[1] you'd have a point. There's no reason why a
| teacher needs to discuss sex, sexual orientation, gender
| identity, etc. with kindergartens, be that heterosexual or
| homosexual. That's a private matter that has no place in a
| classroom, less so in primary grade levels.
|
| [1]: https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2022/1834
| Jcowell wrote:
| > That's a private matter that has no place in a classroom
|
| While I agree that kindergartners may be too young to
| receive sexual education, I disagree that sex, sexual
| orientation , gender identities have no a place in the
| classroom. At least starting in Middle School it's
| important to educate children on the realities of the world
| they are going to see that will include all of these
| things. I can at least point to Health and History as two
| subjects that these topics will be relevant in.
| [deleted]
| dmkirwan wrote:
| The main question I have after reading this is: what 'bargain' is
| the author referring to? Apps change their logos all of the time,
| as is their right. The timing of this post is coincident with
| pride month, and many companies changing altering their logo to
| use the pride colors. I disagree with the suggestion that
| changing the color(s) of the logos and icons hinder the user's
| ability to find the app. A rainbow version of Dropbox's icon
| isn't going to make it any harder for me to find the Dropbox app
| and it might just make under-represented groups feel more seen.
|
| I think the more general topic of brands taking political stances
| is worthy of debate, for sure. I tend to think it's fine. If I
| agree, great. If I don't, then I can choose spend my money at a
| company whose values align better with mine.
| pickovven wrote:
| When someone complains about politics infiltrating a space but
| is unwilling to name the specific politics, suggesting it's a
| general principle, they very likely have a problem with the
| specific politics. They see social costs in voicing that
| opinion, so they generalize it to some principle.
|
| Hard to imagine a minor annoyance of logo design would
| otherwise justify a public post. Living in a pluralistic,
| multi-cultural society doesn't mean excluding politics from the
| public sphere. It means tolerating politics in the public
| sphere, especially if you're ambivalent or even a little
| annoyed by those politics.
|
| In this example, if it's pride symbols or the Ukrainian flag,
| or something else -- those will stop being political once the
| rights are so normalized and obvious, they no longer elicit
| reactions like this.
| mikkergp wrote:
| > I disagree with the suggestion that changing the color(s) of
| the logos and icons hinder the user's ability to find the app.
|
| I actually disagree. There are lots of inputs my brain is using
| other than the specific logo when I'm quickly moving through my
| phone looking for a specific app, and this could totally throw
| me off. Often times I think to save energy my brain looks for a
| "low-rez" abstraction of what I'm looking for rather than one
| that is in full detail. That being said, with everyone
| requiring an app these days my phone is so overloaded I just
| search for everything.
|
| Granted, I don't thing the original posters concerns have as
| much to do with accessibility, and if it takes me a little
| longer to find an app, so be it.
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