Summary
Google Calendar users are upset after noticing that events like Pride Month, Black History Month, Indigenous People Month, Jewish Heritage, Holocaust Remembrance Day, and Hispanic Heritage were removed from default settings.
Google confirmed the change, stating that maintaining a manually curated list of cultural observances worldwide was “not scalable or sustainable.”
Instead, Google has reverted to only displaying public holidays and national observances from timeanddate.com, with users now responsible for adding other events manually.
Unpopular opinion maybe, but I’m ok with this. It’s less clutter if all you want is to see public holidays, and it’s easy enough to install calendars that show other events.
Well it’s not unpopular so to speak… had they never included them that would be one thing… Hell had they removed them 2 years ago that would have been a fine decision. On the other hand removing them right now… it’s quite blatently obvious the motivation isn’t decluttering. It’s about making sure the racists in power don’t have to look at anything that might make them unhappy.
I agree that the motivations aren’t good (and I’m also critical of many of the things that big tech companies are doing to pander to MAGA) but it’s still a functional improvement in my opinion. I just see the decision as a “even a broken clock is right twice a day” sort of scenario.
Be that as it may, the real motivation for this change likely has nothing to with “less clutter” and more with pandering to the MAGA crowd.
Same here. I’ve never been fond of the proliferation of these “think about <minority> for a moment!” holidays. They’re the main thing that comes to mind when I think of what’s “performative.”
Better performative than being able to ignore completely.