Someone Tricked Google Maps Into Renaming Margaret Court Arena
Hacktivism.
Just when we thought we could all stop talking about the Margaret Court controversy, Google Maps has confused everyone by apparently changing Melbourne’s Margaret Court Arena to Evonne Goolagong Arena.
But the surprise renaming is bit more complicated than an example of a global tech giant trying to show how socially progressive it is.
Calls to change the name of the arena have come ever since the former world number one tennis player voiced her opposition to marriage equality. In an open letter, Margaret Court said she would be boycotting Qantas following their decision to openly advocate for marriage equality.
Court also attacked LGBTI activists by comparing them to Hitler, and described transgender kids as a product of LGBTI lobbyists, which led to transgender sports writer Cate McGregor openly condemning her remarks.
Tennis players including Casey Dellacqua and Martina Navratilova have criticised Court’s views, and there are suggestions that players could boycott the arena at next year’s Australian Open. Navratilova wrote an open letter calling Court a “racist and a homophobe” and recommended changing the name of the arena to Evonne Goolagong Arena in recognition of the 14-time Grand Slam winner.
Today it looked like Google Maps appeared to have taken Navratilova’s message seriously.
Haha if you type in Evonne Goolagong Arena into Maps it takes you to Margaret Court Arena #homophobiaisntcool
— Gaston (@NaylorGaston) June 8, 2017
Even just typing in Evonne Goolagong Arena into Google Maps gets you MCA pic.twitter.com/hDJxVh1Iov
— Andrew Brown (@AndrewBrownAU) June 8, 2017
Sneaky political jabs are best delivered when you're running late to an event at a stadium that you can't find.
— Steve Nash (@Nashtendo) June 8, 2017
I AM SCREAMING GOOGLE GIVES NO SHITS https://t.co/U7Zu2CxUrx
— lexi (@sIowtownty) June 8, 2017
wait her name is Margaret Court? that's why the tennis Court arena was called Margaret Court Arena? https://t.co/7n1KqHoup8
— never horney (@gokunaruto67) June 8, 2017
So what happened? Google released a statement distancing itself from the name change and saying it wasn’t their decision. According to the statement they rely on “a wide range of sources, including third-party providers, public sources, and user contributions” in order to produce the most accurate map data as possible.
Unless someone has directly hacked into Google’s mapping system (which seems very unlikely), it sounds like enough people have fed Google information advising it to ‘update’ the arena’s name for this confusion to occur.
The name change is expected to be reversed by Google as soon as possible.