Amazon changes new app icon after design is compared to Hitler mustache

https://www.today.com/news/amazon-alters-app-logo-drew-hitler-comparison-t210417

by Brajeshwar • 5 years ago

29 38 5 years ago

dgritsko• 5 years ago

Do we need a corollary to Godwin's Law? "The longer an app is available in the App Store, the probability that its icon will eventually resemble Hitler's mustache approaches 1."

aendruk• 5 years ago

Less-nonsense page showing the before/after image:

https://nitter.eu/alexhern/status/1366396140116131842

undefined12• 5 years ago

we're in a time of moral panic. this is what it looks like.

familiar to those who lived through the D&D satanic panic.

woah• 5 years ago

Do you think that having your icon be a picture of a smiling cardboard Hitler is a good marketing move?

undefined12• 5 years ago

do you think that D&D is a front for demon worship?

ASalazarMX4• 5 years ago

Make your icon a random blot and some people will imagine Hitler in that too. It's a packing box with tape on the top, something Amazon is widely known for.

csunbird• 5 years ago

I did not see Hitler in the icon either. I feel like people are just looking reasons to be offended somehow.

afavour• 5 years ago

It really isn't. No-one was calling for Amazon to be banned, no-one was even outraged about it. A couple of people made some jokes on Twitter. That's all.

We _are_ in a time of poorly motivated clickbait content, however. That's what this is. There's a certain irony here somewhere in people being outraged about the outrage they perceive others to have... the original outrage doesn't even exist and yet another outrage cycle begins.

Traster• 5 years ago

The real moral panic is the moral panic panic.

itsyaboi• 5 years ago

Thinking of it as a Rorschach test helps explain the knee-jerk reactions

dave0585• 5 years ago

The new icon is still hideous anyway.

wizzard2• 5 years ago

I think it's a cool idea but it's so different and abstract I can't find the app even when I'm looking right at it. Hopefully I'll get used to it.

Also, the Hitler-esque tape at least looked like tape. Now the blue part uses the symbol that's usually used for a post-it note.

mdoms• 5 years ago

I think it's silly that Hitler had a particular moustache 80 years ago therefore that moustache style is permanently verboten. I rock a moustache very similar to Stalin's, thankfully that one is allowed.

bigmattystyles• 5 years ago

I also wonder if it was a popular moustache style in the 1930s or if it already made him look different at the time. I know Michael Jordan sported the style a few years ago and that also didn’t go well.

Cro_on• 5 years ago

It's sad that dressing up as Charlie Chaplin has so many negative connotations.

Nasrudith• 5 years ago

Infamy really sticks around. Adolf is still pretty much dead as a name and nearly everyone with a last name of Hitler had their last name changed (in the US at least). People still don't name their kid Judas.

It was a perfectly practical Great War mustache style for gas masks when facial hair was more in vogue but it is still emotionally poisoned.

ASalazarMX4• 5 years ago

Agreed, this attitude has to end. People are forcing themselves to imagine Nazism in symbols, meanwhile there's actual racism on plain view that many pretend not to see.

wooger• 5 years ago

I don't see it at all.

What has a blue sticker got to do with hitler?

A hitler 'tash is ultra short and square, not a long curve.

wizzard2• 5 years ago

It's the blue tape that changed, not the "smile".

ASalazarMX4• 5 years ago

To be fair, the tape reminds me more of the orange hair patch of a Mr. Meeseeks than Hitler's mustache, mostly because of the smile. The only way I can see a blue Hitler mustache is imagining a closeup cropped from below the nose, and a really tiny mouth.

I guess it costs them less to change the icon and letting the self-offenders pick someone else.

pseudalopex2• 5 years ago

People were mocking Amazon. Not offended.

goatcode2• 5 years ago

I was in the same boat. They changed it so quickly I didn't even notice the "problematic" one.

tomjakubowski• 5 years ago

The curve is the mouth. Blue thing resembles the Hitler stache.

tolbish2• 5 years ago

Amusing, but not sure this belongs on HN.

lucasmullens• 5 years ago

News about Amazon doesn't belong on HN?

tolbish2• 5 years ago

Not news about changing an app icon.

vlovich123• 5 years ago

I found the new icon to be more "Hitler-esque" than the first one. The first one felt more like hair.

Anne to be frank, my first thought was I don't like either variant. The Hitlerishness of it was a second thought.

Demonsult• 5 years ago

The new icon looks more like Hitler with side-combed hair

goatcode2• 5 years ago

I'd wondered why that ugly mess appeared on my phone. I didn't even notice the old one looking like Hitler. Oh well.

hackeraccount2• 5 years ago

Doesn't really belong here.

That said, I thought the rule was that you never went full Hitler and I would have said this tiny soupçon of Hitler was just the right amount to add a bit of darkness to the overall flavor.

Clearly I'm out of step with the times.

hackeraccount2• 5 years ago

Also this reminds me to recommend Look Who's Back https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Look_Who%27s_Back_(film)

which took an idea that could have been trite and boring but made it really creepy. I think because it had that whole boiling the frog thing down - it paced the move from absurd to horrible just right.

kcartlidge• 5 years ago

Seconded - good film.

chickenpotpie• 5 years ago

Important to remember that Amazon’s strategy for everything is to scale to infinity. Even if something offends .01% of people, those are people amazon wants as a customer and a slight app icon change to accommodate them is well worth the money.

musicale• 5 years ago

I thought it was Charlie Chaplin.

Amazon changes new app icon after design is compared to Hitler mustache

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