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Google Maps Ditches Walking Calorie Counter After Backlash (engadget.com)
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.
...for the Culture of Outrage!
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>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.
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.
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.
For real, wanting to go somewhere and wanting to get exercise are two completely different things. It's rarely overlapped where I don't care how long it'd take to get there so I'll burn some calories on foot. So it is completely useless and somewhat insulting, especially to people like me with mobility issues when it comes to walking. BUT screw those in-denial fat ass whiners who can't handle being told they're disgustingly unhealthy and need to do something about it. If they can't handle that simple fact, let alone taking steps to do something about it, that's THEIR own mental illness. DO NOT cater to those types.
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.
For a happier life, ignore everything written on Twitter.
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.
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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? 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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Quick, what's Chicago in German?
Kaltesdreckloch.