While International Women’s Day is widely celebrated, recent social media posts have claimed that Apple and Google removed it from their Calendar apps, sparking widespread attention. However, after a thorough investigation, Fact Crescendo found that this claim is misleading.
Social Media Claim
Recently, a claim went viral on Facebook, stating, “Google and Apple removed Women’s Day from their calendar.” The post garnered significant attention, particularly around March 8th, International Women’s Day, when many social media users noticed that the observance was missing from their calendars. This sparked widespread reactions and discussions showing the absence of the day.
The post accompanying the claim read: “Google has removed International Women’s Day from their calendar. Apple claims they never had it posted, but some users claim they did.”
This claim has also been found in another Facebook post, sparking widespread interest and generating a flurry of reactions among social media users, igniting debates across various platforms.
For more information and specifics regarding this post, the details can be found below.
The same screenshot, along with the identical claim, has also been shared by another Threads user.
This repetition highlights the viral nature of the claim and its ability to spread across different platforms, with the claim stating, “Apple, why did you take International Women’s Day off the calendar?”
Such claims have also been recently posted and found on other Threads, with various users discussing their authenticity.
Given the claim’s extensive dissemination and the considerable attention, it has received from the internet community, we believed it was necessary to perform a fact-check on the above subject.
Fact Check
Fact Crescendo has started debunking the above claim and verifying the above claim through reliable sources especially with the recent and latest news on Google and Apple’s announcements.
Apple’s Calendar app does not automatically show many international observance days, such as International Women’s Day unless they are recognized as official public holidays in the user’s region. This means that many international observance days such as International Women’s Day, Earth Day, or Pride Month are not automatically displayed unless they are recognized as official public holidays in our country.
If we want to see these international observances, we have a couple of options:
- Manually add these events to our calendar.
- Subscribe to third-party calendars that include these international observances, such as holiday calendars for different countries or specialized observance calendars.
Recently, Google Calendar made a significant change by removing certain cultural observances, including International Women’s Day, from its default calendar listings. Google explained that the removal was due to the unsustainability of maintaining a broad set of global cultural moments. The app has since shifted to displaying only public holidays and national observances by default, meaning that many international observance days are no longer included.
This decision was made to streamline the calendar app and focus on more widely recognized events that are specific to each region. However, users can still manually add these observances or subscribe to third-party calendars to keep track of these days.
For more information, check out the following Google’s official explanation.
Google Calendar Blog | Archived Link
The recent announcement regarding Google Calendar’s decision to remove cultural observances such as Pride Month, Black History Month (BHM), and International Women’s Day has gained widespread attention. This change, which Google justified by stating that maintaining an extensive holiday list was not “sustainable,” has also been reported by major publications, including The New York Times (archived link) and The Verge (archived link).
Our Fact Crescendo team has also emailed Apple and Google directly to seek their clarification regarding the alleged post. However, as of now, there has been no response or feedback from either company. We will update this article with any new information or replies from their team.
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Conclusion
Fact Crescendo has found that the claim, along with the photo posted on social media, is misleading. Apple never had International Women’s Day listed in its Calendar app while Google did remove several cultural and awareness observances (including Women’s Day) from its Calendar app, but this was part of a broader policy change to only display public holidays and national observances.
Title:Did Apple and Google Remove International Women’s Day from Their Calendars?
Written By: Kakada SimResult: Misleading
