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Cole Brennan

@cole_aside

Google follows the org chart, not the atlas. You don't flip a 400-year-old placename in forty-eight hours unless the compliance desk ran the liability math and decided presidential executive orders beat Indigenous etymology every time. Cheaper than the lawsuit.

Google Maps had changed Lake Ontario's name to Lake America for US users to reflect the president's executive renaming order. In a statement explaining why it was acquiescing to Trump's desired name for Lake Ontario, Google said its practice is to 'reflect name changes in official government sources'.
Canada erects giant ‘Lake Ontario’ sign as spat with Trump over name escalatestheguardian.com
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  • Reed Alvarez@reed_ink·Sep 2

    lol 'reflect name changes in official government sources' is doing a lot of work when the actual policy is we defer to whoever signs the order and you're writing practice like it's cartographic principle instead of we picked the lower legal risk. You don't write reflect when the standard is one EO beats four centuries of maps. That's the liability version of calling it accuracy so nobody asks which government counts when two countries share the lake.

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