Google Maps Ditches Walking Calorie Counter After Backlash (engadget.com) 364
Following online backlash, Google is removing a planned feature in Maps that shows you how many calories you'd burn when in walking mode. Google's attempt to promote a healthy lifestyle caused a number of people to lambast the feature on Twitter, claiming it would "shame" and even "trigger" those with eating disorders. Engadget reports: Taking note of the negative reaction, Google is now dumping the experiment. It confirmed to Engadget that the update was briefly tested on iOS, and has been abandoned based on user feedback. As The Hill's Taylor Lorenz noted in her tweets, there was no way to turn off the feature. Lorenz also claimed that using pink cupcakes as the unit of measurement was "lowkey aimed at women." Others pointed out that Maps wasn't the appropriate place for the update. After all, there are plenty of fitness and calorie counting apps that keep track of your activity and consumption -- again emphasizing how misplaced the feature was.
Chalk Up Another Victory... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Chalk Up Another Victory... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm outraged that they're implying pink cupcakes are only for women. I love all cupcakes equally.
Re:Chalk Up Another Victory... (Score:5, Insightful)
The standard "cupcake with frosting" image includes pink frosting. Chocolate frosting is far more common in real life, but that ends up looking like poop when used in any sort of graphical sense.
White frosting is usually taken to mean vanilla, and vanilla is synonymous with "boring".
Green and blue are unappetizing colors for food.
Strong red (such as frosting) looks like blood and is a hard color to get consistent (be it across print, web, etc., and don't you dare try to JPEG anything with large solid blocks of red).
Yellow has the piss likeness if it's too strong, and looks weak and lame if it's too weak.
Orange? Only for Halloween. (All colors are valid for their respective holidays.)
Pink frosting is the default because it's "fun", doesn't look like a bodily secretion, doesn't look like rotten food, etc.
Go ahead, use your favorite search engine to look up images of real life cupcakes, then look up drawings / clip art / cartoon / etc. cupcakes. Notice the huge spike in representation of pink frosting.
Re:Chalk Up Another Victory... (Score:5, Funny)
As if I'm gonna take my frosting advice from some guy named Sexconker. Your out of your mind, mate. ;^)
Re:Chalk Up Another Victory... (Score:5, Funny)
OK, so used bing,
I see why you posted anonymously.
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Lies.
https://www.bing.com/images/se... [bing.com]
Re:Chalk Up Another Victory... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Chalk Up Another Victory... (Score:5, Insightful)
the universe doesn't care about your feelings
True. But if I'm trying to sell you something? I sure as hell care about your feelings--at least until the check clears.
Remember, Google is in it for the marketshare. They don't make money off of Maps, they make money keeping track of to where you ask directions and using that information for marketing purposes. "Oh, look, you go to this grocery store? Maybe you'd be interested in some coupons..."
Everything offends me (Score:2)
And I demand that we stop talking about anything.
Give them an off and they might take it too far (Score:2)
That's the problem: once you appease them you're stuck with them. They smell weakness. They realize the power they have over you. They will demand more and more, never being satisfied.
Yeah-- give them the ability to turn one feature off, and people might start to demand that they be able to turn other features off. Turn off autoplay on videos! Turn off automatic notification of things you don't give a damn about! Why, some people might even want to turn off autocorrect!
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Before you know it you'd be back in the bleak world of Windows 95 or Linux - where your computer could be configured to work the way you wanted it to, rather than "allowing" you to jump through endless unavoidable hoops for things you'd otherwise want to do frequently.
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Re:Chalk Up Another Victory... (Score:5, Insightful)
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PC culture only ruins what people are willing to allow it to ruin. There is absolutely nothing stopping you from maning the fuck up and telling them to fuck off, except your own fears. PC culture, meh, who gives a fuck.
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Type "James Damore" into Google's homepage and watch autosuggest totally fail to suggest anything.
Just did (well, using the search box widget). "James dam" suggested "James Damore". "James Damore " suggested "James Damore memo" first with letter, google, manifesto, linkedin, twitter, reddit all appearing high up.
Hitting search on "james damore" yields his linkedin page as the first proper link.
IOW you're high on your own outrage (again) and are, as usual, utterly full of shit.
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No. It's a tool for manipulating people. Your post (and most of those to this story) are examples of how that tool works in action.
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Chalk Up Another Victory... for the Culture of Outrage!
I'd call this "marketing psychology" more than "caving to outrage". For Google, users are both their customers and their product. If any part of their service potentially makes people feel bad (shamed, judged, or, god forbid, triggered), there's a chance that some percentage of them will choose a different service next time, which means less data for them to sell. I'd call this "marketing psychology" more than "caving to outrage".
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Re: If it offends you..... (Score:2)
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I'm not even sure how there were people complaining about it on Twitter in the first place though. I thought they had something in the ToS against children using their service.
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I for one am outraged at your being outraged at others outrage.
It's time for a purge (Score:5, Insightful)
>Google's attempt to promote a healthy lifestyle caused a number of people to lambast the feature on Twitter, claiming it would "shame" and even "trigger" those with eating disorders.
Those people are poisoning our society. They need to be ostracized and allowed to wallow in whatever ghetto they manage to find refuge in.
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Heh. I wonder when these people are going to take notice that Apple... having realized that the market for a $18K status symbol that will, like all technology, be a obsolete in three years, is fairly limited... has refocused the Watch, and its accompanying marketing, almost entirely on health and fitness.
The apoplectic fits whenever one of them sees that little black square on everyones' wrist will be fun to watch.
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Your comment seems to imply that people with eating disorders should be ostracized. Eating disorders are mental health issues; in other words, they are serious medical issues. They require treatment by doctors, but they most certainly shouldn't be blamed or ostracized for having health issues. Your comment is flamebait and should be moderated as such.
Unless of course "those people" are the same as the "number of people" that are complaining about the feature. Yam's comment is insightful, and should be moderated as such.
Re:MOD PARENT DOWN -1 FLAMEBAIT (Score:5, Insightful)
Your reading comprehension is failing. What the OP implies is that people taking offense ON BEHALF OF OTHERS should be ostracized. These are the people that keep us from making tongue-in-cheek jokes, that keep us from calling people-of-a-non-white-skin-color black, and who generally live and breathe their own outrage, because only by trying to make the world PERFECT can they find meaning in their own pathetic little lives.
They are the ones who always know best, who will run from crusade to crusade to prove how great and noble they are, and they are a cancer upon the world.
People with eating disorders? I pity them and hope they get the help they need.
wtf? (Score:5, Insightful)
How can this feature be added back in? I'd find it handy.
What's wrong with encouraging people to walk instead of drive?
Where else could you put such a feature, apart from Maps? Adding navigation to a fitness app would be even worse.
What's wrong with pink cupcakes? Raspberry icing is awesome. How dare women try to claim it for themselves.
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I'd go so far as to suggest that pink cupcakes are the definitive colour. I tend not to eat cupcakes at all, but if I do I'm well up for one with delicate baby pink icing on it.
For walking maps I've found this site to be excellent in the UK:
https://www.mapometer.com// [mapometer.com]
Other regions may vary.
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How can this feature be added back in? I'd find it handy.
That's what always pisses me off about these morally outraged complainers, they project their own biases and don't give a crap that there are other people who find the feature useful.
Some years ago one of the dating sites (match.com?) added "obese" to their list of body types. Some people were all offended that fatties were going to be excluded from dating now that the site allowed them to be identified. These people apparently only considered the possibility that large people would be discriminated agai
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These people apparently only considered the possibility that large people would be discriminated against. It never occurred to their prejudiced little minds that some people are interested in seeking bigger people to date.
They know damned well that some people are interested in that. However, the feature is way more likely to be used first to exclude fat people, second to find fat people to fetishize and treat like a fat fuck doll, and only third because someone just happens to prefer fat people.
However, it's also a truth in advertising feature, and if nobody is forcing you to accurately select your body type, no one is being harmed against their will. So waaaaah. Which, frankly, is how most of these discussions should go.
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Yeah man, I think if the bus is late and it tells me it's a 25 min walk and I can burn some cal, maybe I'd think, hell why don't I just walk?
There was a cardio app that was abondoned by the developers that used to be really good called Cardio Trainer and at the end of your workout they's show you the calories represented as different things, for example 5 apples, 2 oranges, 1 cupcake. It would randomly pick one that matched the amount.
I'd like if Google maps told me I'd burn a pint of beer by walking home f
As a fat person... (Score:3)
As a fat person myself, how is it offensive to be informed that you are burning calories by doing something? It's not like someone's telling you that you should go for a walk to burn calories because you really need it. They're telling you "hey, I noticed you're out on a walk, did you know that that's burning calories? good for you!"
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Two Options: (Score:5, Insightful)
1) change your possibly useful feature to include the ability to turn it off, modify the icon, allow customization.
2) Demand, outraged, it be removed.
Guess which one prevailed.
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Option 3: Ignore the casually outraged minority.
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1) change your possibly useful feature to include the ability to turn it off, modify the icon, allow customization. 2) Demand, outraged, it be removed.
Guess which one prevailed.
You don't know which one prevailed. My guess is that it will be #1.
Google teams generally operate on a very rapid release cycle, many with weekly releases. How do you develop a feature that takes several weeks (or months!) when your team releases weekly? What you don't do is branch the code and work on your branch for a long time, either constantly rebasing or trying to do a big merge at the end. That way lies madness. And bugs. Lots and lots of bugs.
Instead, you flag-protect your feature. As much as po
Toughen up, snowflake (Score:2, Interesting)
A number of people lambasted the feature on Twitter, claiming it would "shame" and even "trigger" those with eating disorders.
Really?
Really?
Lorenz also claimed that using pink cupcakes as the unit of measurement was "lowkey aimed at women."
That would be a valid point (sort of) if it were true. It isn't. The article shows screenshots: it just shows a calorie count.
That being said, it's still likely a useless feature. People are wildly different, and how many calories an individual burns is going to depend on their weight, posture, walking gait, and who knows what other variables. Hell, even the current temperature and wind are probably enough to make the calorie counts completely wrong.
Remove it because it's going to be mostly me
Because shaming. . . (Score:2)
a 325 pound murderer [pennlive.com] is a bad thing to do.
Couldn't these people just go somewhere (Score:2)
else in the world where real help is needed?
NOMGM (Score:2)
Not On My Google Maps
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Oh no, my fat got triggered (Score:5, Insightful)
Pink cupcakes, Mmmmmmmmmm.... (Score:2)
As a man who will eat the shit out of any pink cupcake that is dropped in front of him, I am highly offended by Lorenz's tweet. Lorenz is racist against men and sexist against pink! Boo!
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If you go to the gym I agree. If you don't feel the urgent need to drive 20m to your mailbox then no, exercise and the need to go somewhere overlap.
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Yeay Twitter (Score:5, Insightful)
For a happier life, ignore everything written on Twitter.
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I know, these are unsettling time. I still opt for ignorance., :D
It's not like I have the power to change anything.
I'm gone fishing
I got me a line
Nothing I do is gonna make the difference
So I'm taking the time
And you ain't never gonna be happy
Anyhow, anyway
So I'm gone fishing
And I'm going today
Too late. I'm already triggered (Score:2)
From commercials depicting thin people, thin people passing by in the street. People doing biking, walking, etc. anything that doesn't glorify eating in excess and being a obese sob.
Oh, and I do get PTSD by the mere sight of sports stores and fitness centers. Check your body privilege!
Should I be institutionalized or at least cease being such a whinny little brat? NO! the whole world must cater to my fragile special snowflake ego, by avoiding any triggeri
I don't know which is worse. (Score:2)
"lowkey aimed at women" (Score:2)
Your damn right, as a whiskey drinkin, cigar smokin, red meat eattin MAUN! I have never in my life ate a pink cupcake!
really wtf, why are pink cupcakes "aimed at women", just cause you happen to be a woman and desire a pink cupcake on your guilt walk? Well guess what, I have pink cupcakes, I am going to enjoy one, its strawberry with a little ribbon of rasberry jam in the middle, and you madam are not allowed to have one...
better?
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many men, both straight and gay, as well as many other individuals across the gender spectrum, like the colour pink; for her to suggest this is aimed at women is sexist and insensitive.
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That is just stupid (Score:2)
Problem? (Score:3)
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Rather than just taking a shit on another seemingly useful feature, why not make it opt-in instead? The weenies that will complain about its mere existence can be ignored with extreme prejudice.
I answered that here [slashdot.org].
Stupid snowflakes (Score:2)
Wait, What? (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm fat. I know I'm fat. Having someone say to me "You're FAT!" may be uncouth and rude, but it's true.
And as I stated, it's something I am already aware of, thank you, Capt. Obvious.
Leave them alone!!! (Score:2)
Oh no! (Score:3)
>> it would "shame" and even "trigger" those with eating disorders.
Oh no! We must shelter those delicate little flowers from facts and truthful information!
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in a store, ever have to pass one of those land whales that almost brush both sides of the aisle? and yes, women are more likely then men to be obese, so shaming them with pink cupcakes or anything else stereotypically feminine is fine. quit stuffing yer face, ya cows!
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>> women are more likely then men to be obese
Intuitively it seems right, but please cite references.
Humor (Score:2)
It will soon be ruined for everyone (Score:2)
Perhaps we should just ban pink and blue - fuck it, let's ban all colours (an even colors). Let the whingers wear shades of grey and be miserable.
Bliss (Score:3)
Is it not delightful to see baizou turn on their own kind and tear one another to shreds?
I can hardly believe (Score:4, Insightful)
Sexist woman (Score:2)
What? Is Lorenz saying pink cupcakes are only for women? Is she saying pink is a girl color only? Or that cupcakes are only for girls? I am outraged at this sexist remark. I am a middle aged man that loves cupcakes of all colors, especially the pink ones.
Re:Whatever (Score:5, Insightful)
If only it weren't against every principle of modern UI design to, you know, actually ALLOW PEOPLE TO TURN FEATURES ON AND OFF.
Because if it were, those who find a given feature useful could turn it on (or leave it turned on), and those who don't want it could simply turn it off (or leave it turned off), all without starting a massive Twitstorm.
But of course, it's no longer fashionable to trouble the user with such responsibilities. Google Knows What's Best For Us All(tm)... and if they don't, Apple and Microsoft will be happy to take on the burden of making decisions on our collective behalf.
Totalitarian software [Re:Whatever] (Score:2)
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At first, that appears to be a perfectly reasonable complaint, and it actually is, but the problem I have with it is that in the past, I was several times unhappy with online maps "features" and/or their changes I didn't like, and with the inability to turn them on and off, but I didn't notice anybody trying to spin it into some kind of a social issue. Why is this the one feature I should be able to turn off and not the other ones? (I'm not aiming this at you, just to be sure.)
(And why the hell is it suppos
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My wife teaches them ... These kids want everything crippled in the same way that they have been crippled by their parents
That's something that I've been wondering. When students protest speeches that they don't like, claiming to feel threatened, do they really feel threatened? I thought they just used that as an excuse to shut down speakers, whose politics they don't like.
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Yes. Of course assuming them feeling threatened has anything in common with actually being threatened (or even the speech containing any threats) is really far-fetched. But they grew so over-sensitive they will cry, throw a tantrum and sue for use of words like 'niggardly'.
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It won't be long before you can buy bottles of "aerobically fermented sour wine condiment"
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If they feel threatened by someone speaking what the hell are they going to do if something like a war or a natural disaster happens?
Nobody has a sense of perspective anymore.
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Speaking of UI design, I just with that Google Maps did the one thing I do request of it: Show the English names.
I understand that hundreds of villages in China may not have English-translatable names, but the Chinese characters certainly do have English-character translations. But when I am looking at Europe and every village is in the local language, I wonder why there is the option to choose English if it doesn't show the names in English.
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Hell yeah this. Everyone even semi-educated can read the Latin script these days -- most languages have a sane letter-to-sound mapping (*cough* English and French), thus even if you don't know that Polish 'w' is pronounced 'v' or Spanish 'j' is 'h', you'll get it close enough to be understood in speech.
I've made program [github.com] (Debian package "tran") to transcribe (ok, transliterate with a 1/4-assed attempt at transcription) between writing scripts -- it'd be great if Google could pipe the names through this.
This
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This version lacks CJK support as those characters are logographs rather than letters, thus they convey meaning rather than a series of sounds
That is true for C and J, but not for K. K is phonetic.
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North Korean is purely phonetic, yeah. South Korean, though, contaminates a perfectly good alphabet (it's an alphabet even though they have that weird-for-us combining of three letters into one glyph) with Chinese logographs. Thus, they degrade a script which, true to the words of its 15th century inventor, can be learned in hours, into a monstrosity that requires several years to learn.
Re:Whatever (Score:5, Funny)
Quick, what's Chicago in German?
Kaltesdreckloch.
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Uhm... because you can't translate proper names?
Really? Let's see.
Open Google Maps in a new tab. Go to Europe. Zoom in on Hungary. Look northwest of Budapest. There is a green area named "Budai Tájvédelmi körzet". Pointing the mouse at the label, a box pops up with the English translation: Buda Landscape Protection Area -- I imagine the equivalent of a national forest or wildlife refuge.
So Google Maps knows the English version of the name, yet shows the local language on the map, despite my clear choice of English in the Settings page.
Besi
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That would be "Yerdedmuthafuker'.
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It sends a very clear message that modern politics is failing to meet the needs of around half of the voting public, and change is required.
Not too dissimilar to the Brexit vote really. Dissatisfaction reached tipping point and people voted for something that they knew would hurt because it was still superior to the status quo.
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I like the feature. It kinda makes sense.....I get that people with eating disorders and stuff can be hypersensitive to calorie counts and that it can cause them to engage in the behaviors that they're trying to avoid, but gah, still....it's a useful feature for those of us who try to walk as part of a fitness regimen and really need to track what our exercise buys us.
Re:Whatever (Score:5, Interesting)
What do I not get about people with eating disorders that would cause them to short-circuit by seeing a calorie estimate if they walked? Seems to me that it'd make for a positive motivator; it would encourage people to dare I suggest, "walk." I have a hard time seeing this as anything more than guilt avoidance by people choosing exercise impoverished lifestyles.
To me it looked like a pretty cool feature. It posed a "what if" that might encourage me to opt-in to walking when I otherwise might not have decided to walk and therefore opened my exercise tracking app. That's kind of a shame, I hope they revisit the idea, and just pacify the nay-sayers with an "off" switch.
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I think they mean the opposite end of the spectrum as well. Those who think they are fat, even though they wear a size 0 dress. The ones that have to burn off the calories from a banana.
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I think they mean the opposite end of the spectrum as well. Those who think they are fat, even though they wear a size 0 dress. The ones that have to burn off the calories from a banana.
Burning off the banana calories with exercise is almost certainly better than vomiting it up, using laxatives to poop it out, or not eating it at all.
For everyone with an eating disorder who exercises too much, there are probably 10 that exercise too little.
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What do I not get about people with eating disorders that would cause them to short-circuit by seeing a calorie estimate if they walked?
But the calorie counter is a pink cupcake on a system called Oreo, talk about the double whammy. No wonder they lost it.
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There are many Type II diabetics out there who are controlling their blood sugar with drugs that have the unfortunate side effect of increasing their appetite. This makes it very difficult for them to avoid weight gain. I'd think that having an app that counts how many calories you're burning, especially one that you can't turn off, would be very unpleasant for them because of the implication that they could get rid of that extra weight "if they only tried harder."
<Puts hand up>
yes, but you're unlikely to manage your weight issues just by exercise. You *have* to eat less as well. An app that suggests exercise alone will fix your problems is counterproductive. And then there's BMR, which might exceed your calorific exercise burn. Get an app that does it all, and not a half-arsed one that just monitors exercise. And if you're T2, and you *are* gaining, it's just going to get worse, as you're going to need ever increasing amounts of those drugs that make
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Or, in my case, eat more calories without eating more carbs, because I'm Type 1.5 and I've been underweight for years. I was thrilled to learn that NovaLog causes weight gain, but all I gained was four pounds, less than half of what I was hoping for.
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Re: Whatever (Score:2)
air pollution overlay
Uh... I don't have the funds to move out of an industrial area and it would trigger me to see this information
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It's also not in Google's interest to make such core functionality unusable by people suffering from psychological diseases, as it both needlessly restricts their market/data-farm, and comes across as extremely insensitive
Of course the optimal solution would be to just let people easily turn the feature off if it bothers them. Heck, I'd probably do so just because I don't want to waste pixels on information I don't care about.
As for pink frosting - I'm inclined not to read too much into it, but there's not
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It's also not in Google's interest to make such core functionality unusable by people suffering from psychological diseases, as it both needlessly restricts their market/data-farm, and comes across as extremely insensitive
How far gone must you be to consider a calorie counter "extremely insensitive"?
If you find the mere existence of a calorie counter extremely insensitive, the problem is not with the calorie counter, I assure you.
I also assert that this thinking is far removed from the majority, and far removed from any rational demographic. The only people that would possibly complain about the existence of a calorie counter can accurately and reasonably be labelled as SJWs. Anyone else would, even if in disagreement, merel