Snapchat Maps Labeled New York City As Jewtropolis

Snapchat
image: twitter @micahgrimes

Early this morning some users of Snapchat saw New York City labeled as “Jewtropolis” on “the app’s map features,” according to Gothamist.

Other sites and apps which use maps provided by MapBox also had this label appear. Some others affected with the anti-semitic name change included Citi Bike and StreetEasy.

Manhattan was labeled as Jewtropolis in what Snapchat said was “vandalism” to their mapping partner Mapbox.

I know pretty much nothing about Snapchat but Gothamist explains that SnapMap is “a location-sharing feature. It allows Snapchatters to tell friends and followers where they are and what they’re up to, or to simply observe other users’ movements in undetectable “ghost mode.

Mapbox sent a statement to Gothamist explaining what took place. “Mapbox has a zero tolerance policy against hate speech and any malicious edits to our maps. This morning, the label of “New York City” on our maps was vandalized. Within an hour, our team deleted and removed that information.”

Other hateful changes to the maps were almost attempted to be made, none of which were done successfully.

When I first heard about this story, I didn’t know if I should laugh or take offense to this information. As someone who is Jewish and lives in NYC, what seems like a funny online cyber prank could definitely be taken in a negative manner or even be considered anti-semitism

Based on the information shared in the article, it’s safe to say the person or people who hacked Mapbox didn’t do it as a joke. Not nice- grow up, get a life!

Find out more about the incident from Gothamist here.

2 thoughts on “Snapchat Maps Labeled New York City As Jewtropolis

  1. Just imagine the reaction and Government action if this had in some way referred to African Americans .The lack of response by DiBlasio is typical of his liberal but anti Jew ways.
    The silence is astounding, especially with NYC being involved thru CITIBikes.
    I would expect every firm involved to immediately apologize and start to source maps elsewhere. I will bet that ultimately, an employee was involved.
    The silence is deafening!

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