Snapchat and other popular apps with maps were vandalized to label New York City as 'Jewtropolis'

pulse

August 30, 2018 4:02 PM

Mapbox — the third-party mapping software used by Snapchat, the Weather Channel, StreetEasy,Citi Bike, others — was subject to vandalism, Snapchat says, which caused New York City to be labeled "Jewtropolis."

Snapchat users discovered on Thursday morning that the app's map labeled New York City as "Jewtropolis."
The cause was vandalism of the mapping software from Mapbox, a third-party company that supplies mapping information to Snapchat, StreetEasy, and Citi Bike.
The change went unnoticed by Mapbox and was visible for a few hours Thursday morning until being fixed about 9 a.m. ET.
Mapbox confirmed that it was an act of human vandalism, but it still isn't sure how the change was able to slip through the cracks unnoticed.

Snapchat users took to social media to post screenshots showing the Snap Map labeling New York City as "Jewtropolis" early Thursday morning.

The cause? It turns out that the mapping software company Mapbox, used by Snapchat, the Weather Channel, StreetEasy, Citi Bike, and more, was vandalized to display the anti-Semitic moniker in place of New York City.

The company said the issue was resolved shortly before 9 a.m. ET.

Mapbox is used by a variety of developers and by 400 million people a month, but not all services that rely on Mapbox's data were affected by the vandalism. Other companies such as Vice and Vox that use Mapbox did not seem to be affected, The Verge reported.

In a statement to Tech Crunch, Mapbox CEO and founder Eric Gundersen said Mapbox uses humans and AI to check for vandalism, but the company is still looking into how this particular act of vandalism slipped through the cracks. Mapbox did not immediatley respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

"This is now 100 percent fixed and should have never happened. It's disgusting," Gundersen said, as reported by Tech Crunch. "We're constantly scanning for this, and it's an error on our part [to have missed it]."

@dxn_14 Hey Dan! Thanks for... @ Snapchat Support

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