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Amazon Quietly Changed its App Icon After Some Unfavorable Comparisons (cnn.com) 108

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Amazon has quietly changed the design of its new app icon, replacing the blue ribbon on top that drew some unfavorable comparisons. From a report: Users of the Amazon Shopping app will now see a brown box that resembles a parcel with a blue strip that looks like packaging tape above the company's signature arrow in the shape of a smile. Amazon introduced the initial new icon in a handful of international markets in late January, but has now changed the design of the blue tape after some said it resembled a toothbrush-style mustache, similar to the one worn by Adolf Hitler. "I completely missed that amazon quietly tweaked its new icon to make it look... less like hitler," wrote Alex Hern, a technology editor for the Guardian, on Twitter. The new icon, the first design change in more than five years, replaces the shopping cart and ditches the word "Amazon," but displays the company's smiling arrow logo more prominently. The blue tape looks like it's being torn off, as if opening the package.
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Amazon Quietly Changed its App Icon After Some Unfavorable Comparisons More

Amazon Quietly Changed its App Icon After Some Unfavorable Comparisons

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  • Ughhh.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MitchDev ( 2526834 ) on Wednesday March 03, 2021 @10:03AM (#61119298)

    "Some" have too much time on their hands and are just looking for excuses to be offended....

    • "Some" have too much time on their hands and are just looking for excuses to be offended....

      No, that's not offensive, it's just funny. Especially in view of Bezos' great dictator [wikipedia.org] like ambitions to conquer the world and monopolise all internet trade. Having taken that shot at Bezos, I'm pretty sure even Bezos laughed at this icon. The only one offended here is you. Here is another bit of internet satire for you to look at and then start shrieking about political correctness over: https://xkcd.com/528/ [xkcd.com]

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Apparently you missed the point. You are in violent agreement.
        OP was not offended, the snowflakes that caused the change were.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Ksevio ( 865461 )

        Yeah when people laugh at your icon and say "haha that looks like a hitler face" then companies like amazon get a bit worried, not something they really want to be associated with.

        No company wants to to have the "how to" on using their app to start off with "First click the Hitler..."

        • Yeah when people laugh at your icon and say "haha that looks like a hitler face" then companies like amazon get a bit worried, not something they really want to be associated with.

          No company wants to to have the "how to" on using their app to start off with "First click the Hitler..."

          No, they just don't want to get mocked by the entire portion of the human race that isn't a wing nut snowflake. Stop overthinking a few people mocking Amazon for unknowingly creating an icon that looks like Hitler to be some sort of frontal assault on your precious values.

          Now, here's a couple of knees that look a little bit like Hitler: https://sadanduseless.b-cdn.ne... [b-cdn.net]

          Take a gander and tell us how outraged you are by this galling example of political correctness.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Ksevio ( 865461 )

            That's what I'm saying - it's not that people are outraged, it's that it makes them look foolish

      • No he's not a dictator, he's a Talosian. His goal isn't too rule mankind, but to enslave it. There's a difference.

    • Re:Ughhh.... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by BrainJunkie ( 6219718 ) on Wednesday March 03, 2021 @10:15AM (#61119334)
      I think it less about people actually taking offense than it is people looking to feel powerful. It is likely that we read about only the handful of successful efforts like these and not the 1,000s of unsuccessful ones. No one is really hurt by the failures, but they see the successes and look for ways to do that themselves because it feels good and returns a lot of "likes" or the like.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by RemindMeLater ( 7146661 )
        bingo. Only a fraction of this is about actual offense or grievance any more. Now it's all a power play. Can I get something cancelled? Can I get a word or book banned? It's pathetic but it's in control. Just wait until the current crop of kids -- who are steeped in wokeness -- get into positions of power. The bar gets set ever higher. It's now not enough to just not be racist, you have to be "anti-racist." And the guy who coined that term, Ibram Kendi, who is the de facto thought leader of the pro

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by cusco ( 717999 )

          Ibram Kendi, who is the de facto thought leader of the progressive left

          Well you definitely exaggerated this clown's influence and made up the idea that there is a "de facto thought leader". I've self-identified as 'progressive' since Reagan's reign of error, and I'd never heard of that bozo before your post.

          From your UID I realize you're just getting started in your troll career, but that's a pretty pitiful first attempt.

          • Never heard of him, huh? You're not much of a progressive. This is the guy that basically popularized if not coined the entire "anti racism" movement. Jack Dorsey gave him $10M. He heads an entire "Department of Anti Racism" at Boston University. Multiple books at #1 on the NYT bestseller list. Never heard of him... please.

            And spare me your UID elitism. This is why slashdot comment participation has plummeted. Pompous asses huffing over their UID. Not that I care what you think but I've been readi

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by cusco ( 717999 )

              New troll has weak troll-fu.

              The guy was born in 1982 according to Wikipedia. People were dying in the cause of the anti-racism movement for three decades prior to his first squalling breaths. (Actually much much longer, but that's when the movement finally got organized enough to pick up steam.)

              Boston University has a lot of professors that I've never heard of, and pretty much anything backed by a competent publisher makes the NYT bestsellers list for the last two decades. Even Mario Vargas Llosa made th

              • That's you've never heard of him might just mean that you're disconnected and your "progressive" movement has .. moved out from under you. In other words, you're out of touch. Happens to old men.

                Kendi has huge reach and influence today. Pull up his books on Amazon and you'll see twenty thousand reviews.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sjames ( 1099 )

        Or it's just people laughing at marketing. If Amazon can add a wide blue line expecting me to be filled with anticipation as a result, I can giggle at an alternative interpretation.

        Amazon just wanted less giggling so they changed it.

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday March 03, 2021 @10:16AM (#61119336)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • It is sad that the first thing people jump on at Slashdot when they read about a corporate logo or icon being changed after it was pointed out it looks like Hitler is "OMG people are so offended!"
        Because apparently having corporate imagery that looks like the last things anyone would want associated with their business is fine if a humorless feminist doesn't run a campaign against it? What?

        Ah well, you know... SOME people see others "just looking for excuses to be offended" whenever there's an attempt to have things a bit less Hitler-like than usual.
        Which is something THEY have no problem with.
        To them there's nothing wrong with a bit of Hitler in everyone's life.
        Like in their fantasies of being rammed in their every orifice by Hitler's Brazilian clones' tiny penises.

        On a side note - the new logo brings up in me associations of a nose full of snot. [cnn.com]
        Which IS still better than Hitler I guess.

        • There are evil people without beards or mustaches, guess that means all clean-shaven people are offensive monsters by your standards...

          Or does Charlie Chaplin have some dark, dark secrets?

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by DNS-and-BIND ( 461968 )

        Here's a good piece that touches on what you're talking about. [www.persuasion.community] "The author and essayist Joseph Bottum has found the proper term, and I will adopt it here: We will term these people The Elect. They do think of themselves as bearers of a wisdom, granted them for any number of reasons - a gift for empathy, life experience, maybe even intelligence. But they see themselves as having been chosen, as it were, by one or some of these factors, as understanding something most do not."

        "In 1500, it was about not bein

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by swell ( 195815 )

        " nobody - well, nobody mainstream - wants people to look at their logo or icons and think "Hitler". It kinda has the wrong connotations. "

        Hitler was a sad, pathetic little man. At root, he was not much different from the rioters who stormed the Capitol recently. No evil intended, just a vague rage against some perceived injustice in the world. He got swept up in a conspiracy idea. Unfortunately, his enthusiasm thrust him into a leadership role where he reached his level of incompetence (see Peter Principle

      • I doubt anyone was offended. I suspect the people who pointed out the likeness were having fun at Amazon's expense in much the same way we all laughed at the Hitler tea kettle [theguardian.com].

        How have I missed the Hitler Tea Kettle for the past eight years?! That's hilarious!

      • I've always thought the swoosh arrow looks like a penis, complete with frenulum. Wouldn't have picked up on the tape shape at all.

    • Re:Ughhh.... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by DarkOx ( 621550 ) on Wednesday March 03, 2021 @10:59AM (#61119454) Journal

      It just an example of why these people should not be taken seriously. Everything that inst a raised fist or hammer and sickle to them is symbol of Naz.ism.

      You have to be pretty warped if seeing that logo the first thing you think is 'Adolf Hitler' because it does not look like Hitler, its not a human face; its a fairly high correspondence symbol for a cut bit of packaging tape over Amazons very very low correspondence symbol of a smile.

      Basically if you add these things together and come up with "Adolf Hitler" I think it says more about your own unhealthy preoccupation with that than it does about Amazon.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Trying to cancel imaginary foes is a new low.

        No one was offended, a bunch of people just mocked an Amazon because the internet loves memes.

      • You have to be pretty warped if seeing that logo the first thing you think is 'Adolf Hitler' because it does not look like Hitler

        I think you really lack imagination if you didn't open that page and default to oh ... 1/3rd of a mustache above an obvious smile. Now is it offensive? No. Am I offended? Hell no. But if you didn't think think straight away "LOL it's a Hitler box" then I think you're going to find yourself in the incredible minority.

        I'm also going to guess you layd in the garden as a kid looking up and wondered "WTF is my sister talking about a dragon eating a banana. All I see is white cumulonimbus formations caused by con

        • Layd Really? Wtf spell chequer! Why do I even type this post from a PeeSee if I still make mistakes.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by lsllll ( 830002 )

          But if you didn't think think straight away "LOL it's a Hitler box" then I think you're going to find yourself in the incredible minority.

          That's what's wrong with pandering to "looks like" and other superficial things. The Swastika is an ancient symbol, predating the Reich by thousands of years, and Hitler's use of it all but destroyed the symbol. George Orwell wore a toothbrush mustache, yet even him, among with all these other notables [wikipedia.org] don't persuade you that sometimes a toothbrush mustache is just a toothbrush mustache, and sometimes a logo is just a logo.

          • That's what's wrong with pandering to "looks like" and other superficial things.

            The classic 1/3rd of a mustache is now associated with an atrocity. Nothing more. The Swastika is an ancient symbol. Cool story. In 1890 approximately 1% of all newborns in northern Europe were named Adolf. The toothbrush mustache is just a toothbrush mustache. Always has been, always will be. But the indisputable fact is that one particular person in history wore that toothbrush mustache so prominently as to define him. I'm of course talking about Charlie Chaplin. ... while he parodied Hitler. The defining

      • Welcome to 21st America, people with too much time on their hands searching for things to be offended by....

    • Re:Ughhh.... (Score:4, Funny)

      by Alypius ( 3606369 ) on Wednesday March 03, 2021 @11:05AM (#61119466)
      True. But still, Amazon could've just widened it, called it Stalin, and everyone would be fine with it.

    • It's not about people being "offended", it's about people making fun of the "Hitlerious" logo getting under Bezos' skin. I remember laughing when I first saw it too, like how did the designer(s) not see it?

  • Some people always look for some way to be offended.

    • The icon is really ugly and stupid. Sure, more modern and abstract, still identifiable, but an ugly scar on my Home Screen at best. Change for change’s sake...

  • Caring more about an icon (Score:5, Interesting)

    by xack ( 5304745 ) on Wednesday March 03, 2021 @10:13AM (#61119328)
    Than the conditions of their warehouses.

    • Sadly, count how many see the icon vs how many see the conditions of their warehouses. It's all about perception.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cusco ( 717999 )

        Have you actually seen the conditions in their fulfillment centers? Have you compared them to the conditions in similar warehouse positions industry-wide? No, you haven't. Do you know why I'm confident enough to make that statement? Because I have, and they're not that bad. Additionally the pay and benefits in the fulfillment centers are well above average for that industry. That's why there are people who come back every year for the Christmas rush for a decade or more.

        • I haven't, and I just rely on news to read about it. I have also read stories about hanging mobile phones for trees, and pissing in bottles while doing deliveries, and I just extrapolate. What I don't know is what you consider good/bad, as that's based on personal experiences and attitude.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by cusco ( 717999 )

            I've done warehouse work, it's a difficult, boring, shitty job, generally with crap pay and nasty working conditions. The FC jobs are still difficult, boring, shitty jobs, but the pay and benefits are better and the working conditions are about as good as you can make those shitty jobs. Warehouse work is a dead-end job, which is why I got out of it, but for unskilled labor it's better than restaurant or farm work (which I've also done).

  • Amazon is a great name for them (Score:4, Insightful)

    by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Wednesday March 03, 2021 @10:28AM (#61119380) Homepage Journal

    Naming their site after a critically important feature of the biosphere being burned down to make room to grow cash crops is ideal

  • It's just ugly (Score:5, Interesting)

    by swm ( 171547 ) <swmcd@world.std.com> on Wednesday March 03, 2021 @10:29AM (#61119384) Homepage

    As soon as I saw it, I was like, what is that? Where did it come from? Was it always there? How did it get on my phone?

    It's ugly.

    It's ugly because it's brown. I understand that it's meant to evoke an Amazon shipping box, and I've got nothing against brown per se. But app icons aren't brown. App icons are bright, clean, primary colors. (Check your phone; you'll see.) It clashes with everything else on my screen.

    After a few days, I moved it off to the screen where I keep apps that I never use so I wouldn't have to look at it.

    • I just want companies to stop drastically changing the color of their icon. Sad, I know that stops them from ever changing, I suppose, but when I'm using my phone and can't find an app that I use regularly, despite it being in the same spot as always, it's weird. Shit does that mean I'm getting old? Get off my lawn.

  • And this is why nothing ever improves. If you actually care about people, there are FAR more effective ways to help people who need it and improve their quality of lives than to complain about stretches of the imagination.

    Heck if you want to be biased even focus your help on your favorite oppressed group, but I can guarantee you that if you were to fix 10 sandwiches for homeless people that alone would amount to more help to the downtrodden than the entirety of a Twitter career of outrage.

    • If you actually care about people, there are FAR more effective ways to help people who need it and improve their quality of lives than to complain about stretches of the imagination.

      And how many of those involve 2 hours of time from a graphic designer. And this is on hundreds of millions of devices. Even if this was just a nano-Hilter level of picture, in aggregate it's removing a full deci-Hitler-picture from the universe.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ksevio ( 865461 )

      What do you mean? They saw their icon could be improved and they did it.

      Are you trying to suggest that the graphic designers at amazon should be making sandwiches instead of doing their job?

  • Well at least... (Score:3)

    by EvilSS ( 557649 ) on Wednesday March 03, 2021 @10:30AM (#61119388)
    Well at least their logo still looks like a penis.

  • Ridiculous (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by detritus. ( 46421 )

    Hitler was a fan of Charlie Chaplin, and it's speculated by historians that he copied the toothbrush mustache from him to help boost his public image.
    What's next, banning Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy because they could have influenced Hitler? Nothing would surprise me in woke fascist America.

  • Simply more lazy internet activists trying to virtue signal. Never on the front lines, just provide the commentary.

  • Stigma (Score:3)

    by Dan East ( 318230 ) on Wednesday March 03, 2021 @11:15AM (#61119502) Journal

    It's pretty amazing from a sociological and psychological standpoint how a moustache style is still so undeniably associated with Hitler, and all the negative connotations conveyed by him and his party.

    Really, it does seem to be the moustache, specifically, that creates the unique and easily recognizable aspect to him.
    https://external-preview.redd.... [external-preview.redd.it]

    I wonder if it was the fact that nearly all men stopped wearing that style of moustache, and thus the public is not used to seeing it on anyone but photographs of Hitler, that has linked it so strongly with him.

    Apparently the word N A Z I is blocked by Slashdot's lameness filter. How lame.

    • Apparently the word N A Z I is blocked by Slashdot's lameness filter. How lame.

      I remember first running into that on Slashdot during discussion of a submission related to honest-to-goodness N A Z I s. It might've been about Enigma [wikipedia.org]; I don't recall - but I found it pretty freaking hilarious that I wasn't allowed to use that name in a discussion about them!

  • It's a smirking face with a fringe of blue hair covering the eyes.
    It reminds me more of an anime-girl than a Austro-German dictator.

  • Some people just have too much time on their hands, constantly looking to be offended. You weren't offended, you TOOK offense at something that wasn't intended to be so.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      Remember when some pro family conservative organization was scanning cartoons including Snow White for silhouettes of boners showing through the dwarfs' costumes?

      There are enough nut cases to go around for everyone.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dcw3 ( 649211 )

        I can't disagree, but it seems people in tribes of each type can't see beyond their own echo chambers.

  • Sieg heil, sempai!

  • A weird smirk with no eyes or other facial features looks creepy in any case.

    A cheers to custom icon packs on mobile operating systems that support that freedom.

  • Amazon got some free publicity, AND gets to broadcast how upstanding and genuine they are- or wish to be seen as.
    It's a win win for Amazon, as we're discussing it here.

  • Paranoid schizophrenics tend to see threatening images in everyday objects. Tell you anything about the woke mob?

  • Godwin'd themselves preemptively. Nice

  • It was his enigmatic smile.

    And his blue mustache.

  • That smile looks like smirky white privilege, and is offensive. Change it to an orange blob stat.

  • to get modded up, and he's not here.

  • I don't know how anyone can think that's a toothbrush moustache, considering it's right above the signature Amazon dick.

  • I find this very funny. I canâ(TM)t even put it into words

  • This one is better [donmai.us]

    I keep a Sharpie in my pocket just waiting for a chance ...

  • My first impression of the zig zag tape icon was "Charlie Brown's Shirt", not Hitler. The new icon is decent, and has a nice subliminal hint of "you know you want to open this, so order now".
  • In my opinion, this is already too stupid)

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