It is frankly ridiculous to call better photos for people of color -- particularly Black people -- "social engineering". There is a very long history of photography methods discriminating against darker skin tones, stretching back at least a century.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/25/lens/sarah-lewis-racial-b...

https://petapixel.com/2015/09/19/heres-a-look-at-how-color-f...

This is a real issue of racial and ethnic justice with material consequences.

All big companies are adopting this kind of behaviour: show we're inclusive by having as few white heterosexual men as possible.

We're still decades away from racial and sexual integration and equality.

Which is a shame since we were getting very close for a while there.

We have never been very close to integration.

Not in the US at least. But elsewhere, yes. The world as a whole? I agree with you, not close. But really that's fine.

Does it bother anyone else that Google is basically saying "How can we use race/gender as a driver for selling phones."

Not really. Google wants black people to buy their phones because a featured they developed works better for their skin tone. Should companies who make smaller handsets be barred from advertising to women?

Do you think black people striving for equality are looking for companies putting black people on their ads? They want equality, not their struggle to be washed away by bullshit empty posturing.

"Want to end racism? Stop talking about it. I'll stop calling you a white man if you stop calling me a black man."

- Morgan Freeman

Do you think that finally tuning their photo processing software to produce good results for people with darker skin tones (to match the good results they already had for lighter skin tones) is empty posturing?

They literally acted instead of talking about it.

> Do you think black people striving for equality are looking for companies putting black people on their ads?

Absolutely. How else would a person with attributes typically ignored know that a product was designed for them? Ethnic hair care products is another example. Do you think only white people should be in ads for hair care products for African Americans?