Hacker News

Apple removes Lebanese village names from Apple Maps as Israel attacks

71 points by newspaper1 2 hours ago | 12 comments

roxolotl 2 hours ago

This will probably get flagged but it’s a good example of how any industry as powerful and global as the tech industry is inextricably with the political fates of the world.

nairboon 2 hours ago

Already happened:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47742363

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47742680

jauntywundrkind 56 minutes ago

That's why it will get flagged. Bother & damnation.

I cannot state enough how strongly I think people should have some accountability at least to their flagging. This ability to remain an Anonymous Coward while suppressing such vital stories at the heart of this world and it's tensions is exceedingly fallen.

At a minimum there ought be a system to out the flaggers. My gut says flagging should be a public action, period.

delichon 23 minutes ago

I'd rather moderated posts were moved to restricted.ycombinator.com or some such, (thickskin.ycombinator.com?) and let those who want to chat about it do so there, and everyone else can not go there. We're seeing a lot of that kind of nsfw domain bifurcation, like civitai.green versus civitai.red, tensor.art versus tensorhub.art, etc. Those are forced by the payment processing cartel, but it doesn't have to be. Illegal content would still just go away.

jjtheblunt 2 hours ago

this is misleading: Apple sources external datasets for maps and continuously imports, which used Scala last i knew, so the question is what upstream map source is removing Lebanese sites?

comrade1234 2 hours ago

I thought it was TomTom? Anyway, it'll be different sources in different parts of the world.

jmyeet 2 hours ago

There is a long history of what goes on a map being controversial. Changing a map or leaving it alone is a position either way.

One such area is the disputed region of Kashmir, which has been an issue for decade, as recently as February 2026 [1].

Go back further and you have official maps depicting "savagery" [2].

Even the use of the Mercator projection perpetuates biases. Modern maps aren't as removed from these biases as one might think [3].

[1]: https://www.dawn.com/news/1972510

[2]: https://blogs.loc.gov/maps/2021/04/when-savages-roamed-the-e...

[3]: https://onartandaesthetics.com/2016/12/18/the-politics-of-wo...

aerodog 2 hours ago

Is there a good way to find out how this happened? Who is in charge of Apple Maps? This is a huge offense to the semitic people of Lebanon; dare I say this is a tremendously anti-Semitic offense

gostsamo 2 hours ago

Who controls the present, controls the past. And some people really want to rewrite the past, present, and future.

antibull 2 hours ago

[dead]

tuokgr6ojseijc 2 hours ago

[dead]

mdni007 56 minutes ago

Those villages were promised to Israeli's 3000 years ago. So it's just Apple correcting their mistake. It is antisemitic to think otherwise. I suggest you take down this post or else.

bastard_op 49 minutes ago

Tim Apple always does what is right! Next he'll give an Apple Peace Prize to Bibi.

PotatoAditya 2 hours ago

Well we know that someone does not want to hurt trump and that someone is most probably tim Cook