Shame on you, Google

Today, I logged on to Twitter just to make a quick tweet and go off. While scrolling through “For You” page to know what’s going on with the Galamsey¹ issue (ie, #StopGalamseyNow), I saw a post that confused me at first. Because I didn’t think it was even possible in the first place. What makes it even more baffling is how the government of Ghana was able to orchestrate this in the first place — means they have the knowledge, resources and power to go this length.

Here’s the post:

The government is doctoring google maps to hide the effects of galamsay. Take a look at before and after . @Google is complicit in aiding oppressive governments and helping infringe on the rights of people#ReOccupyJulorbiHouse #StopGalamsey #FreetheCitizens https://t.co/WsriVOmqoB pic.twitter.com/ueeizLHgir

— Hadzivodun (@Agbenorxevi_) September 28, 2024

Isn’t this crazy? On many levels, Google (Google Maps specifically) is so wrong.

• Is there a disregard for the environment’s safety? Or that of Ghanaians’ is negligible enough to ignore. How much was it worth?
• Google aids and covers up for oppressive governments. Now, I’m only learning about what they’ve done to my country. I’m very certain other countries have been victims to censoring from Google. Not just maps, anything else. I believe nothing is beyond limits.
• Google lacks integrity. I mean, the map tiles aren’t even replaced properly. Disappointing!

Years ago, Google was my favorite company in the world. It was a place I wanted to work at. But in the recent years, Google doesn’t seem like an exciting place anymore. On a more personal level, Google has a terrible dark mode experience on a lot of their web products — dark modes don’t reflect until the page reflects. Instead of focusing resources and efforts on such an easy problem, this is what they can do?

Now what?

I am deciding to boycott Google’s products. First, I’ve already switched to duckduckgo. It’s set as my default search engines. As time progresses, I’ll transfer my email providers, drives, etc. away.

Yes, I’m just one in a billion of Google’s users so what? Well, this is one in a million cases of censoring Google has been involved in. In either cases, what difference does it make, right?

Shame on you Google

How did brown water abruptly become green?

Afterthoughts

Maybe Google was threatened of their services being blocked in Ghana which will affect their customers like Uber and Bolt. But my counter is, if manually editing map tiles was not possible in the first, then we wouldn’t have gotten here. If our government knew about it’s possibility, then in a way, Google advertised this backdoor.