I'll quote it again.

"UI colors can have different meanings in different cultures."

And all the examples I gave have red meaning opposite things in user interfaces based on cultural assumptions.

Off/danger. Number up/number down. Occupied/available.

Websites were just one example of UI.

> It's funny that this person speaks multiple languages and actually used different apps but was downvoted anyway.

They said they haven't seen any. That doesn't override actual examples!

If it was cultural then newer designs like computer interfaces would be affected. Also you ignored traffic lights.

That sounds like a description of culture.

> If it was cultural then newer designs like computer interfaces would be affected.

Does the big TV run by a computer not count as an interface?

Okay, do you have some pictures of chinese stock websites?

> Also you ignored traffic lights.

What about them? Yes Japan uses the same color scheme as the US for traffic lights. Because the idea spread that way. I don't see how that's relevant to either of my examples that talked about Japan?

...you're not suggesting that one situation where colors match invalidates situations where colors are different, right?

So either colors were chosen because they have a deep cultural meaning or they were chosen arbitrarily?

Older choices affect newer choices, and consistent choices become culture.

Once upon a time, stock chart makers made an arbitrary choice influenced by older choices that had become culture. Those older choices being a general association with fortune, and a specific association with loss of money. (With intermediate steps, I think, but I'm being brief.) And those associations were different for different groups. Now the chart colors are part of culture too.

A choice being arbitrary doesn't mean it was random. You can trace the influence here.

But even if it had been random, it's culture now. Money in red has implications, and the implications vary.

Different choices have different levels of cultural depth. Often the depth is zero. But it varies.

And culture is created by arbitrary decisions coalescing into guidelines. If it's not coalescing, then it's not culture. You have to look at the big picture to tell if something is culture or not.

You're implying that if red's meaning in one situation is the same, then red's other meanings in other situations must be the same.

Okay I guess. I don't know why you would think that, but I don't have much hope of convincing you otherwise.

> all different and arbitrary

Those are the extremes of the spectrum.

Color choices are not at either extreme.

Most color choices are arbitrary, some of them are shallowly cultural, and some of them are deeply cultural.

HN having an orange banner at the top isn't significantly cultural. Traffic lights are worldwide culture. Black or green for positive money and red for negative money are US culture. Red for positive money and black or green for negative money are Chinese culture. These choices tie into older associations, which affects the depth. But even if they were shallow they'd still be culture.

Here's a link full of its own links https://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/6982/excep...

Or we can look at how old the western association with red as negative money is: https://grammarist.com/idiom/in-the-red-and-in-the-black/

If you wanted specific links you should have said so 4 days ago after I wrote "You can also do a text search for china red green stocks, or japan red green stocks."

If you want a citation for HN's orange not being deeply cultural, then you got me, I didn't actually check. But let's see... "The orange logo was chosen because it was the opposite of VC websites which were typically forest green or navy blue" yeah that's not deep culture.