Google has decided to rename Lake Ontario in the US. Please uninstall Google Maps.
While I understand they’re pulling data from the US government, they have no actual legal obligation to comply. This is entirely a choice an executive at Google made.
Did you know: When you click a link on Google and then go there Google tracks your location and links it to all your ads. This feature is called Local Search Ads, and you can hit Google’s pocketbook directly in protest by not having Google Maps installed.
When you have Google Maps installed Google is always tracking you. That tracking data feeds into a lot of products: things like mapping cell and wifi networks to geolocations, ads, recaptcha, search, and more. Google stores a profile of who you are, where you live, where you work, who you visit, etc.
If uninstalling is too much for you go to your Google account and disable Location History in privacy settings. Alternatively, click your user profile icon and turn on incognito mode, which disabled tracking and other features.
This will reduce the data linked to your profile (though, in reality, there’s no assurance this does anything, like when that disabled Nest camera was used by the FBI last year).
Browsing without an account does not have the effect. If you simply log out you have no privacy limitations enabled.
It’s in the instance description: “A Canadian-run community, geared towards Canadians, but all are welcome!”
It’s hard to properly gauge the response online since social media is so personalised and everyone sees different things. So I don’t know the scale of it, but I can assure you that at least in the communities I follow, there was a similar response to renaming the Gulf of Mexico, as well as many other things that Google has done that we don’t like.
Lemmy.ca does, this community does not, but I figure you know that. You guys pretend to not know a lot of things.
Thing is, clearly many of you did not, and this community specifically serves as a great example of what I’m talking about. But I get it, this is the larp.