Snapchat has apologized for listing New York City as “Jewtropolis” on its map feature, a mistake that it said was the result of data vandalism from a third party that altered the map’s information.
“Snap Map, similar to other apps, relies on third-party mapping data from OpenStreetMap, which unfortunately has been vandalized,” a spokesperson for Snap, Snapchat’s partner company, said in a statement. “This defacement is deeply offensive and entirely contrary to our values, and we want to apologize to any members of our community who saw it. As soon as we were alerted to this, we began working with our partner Mapbox to fix it, and it is now corrected on the Snap Map.”
Although OpenStreetMap’s site did not display “Jewtropolis” over New York City on Thursday morning, a Mapbox demo map displayed “Jewtropolis,” according to BuzzFeed News.
Mapbox responded to the controversy and said that the term had been deleted after the company was notified.
“This morning, the label of ‘New York City’ on our maps was vandalized,” Mapbox said in a blog post Thursday. “Within an hour, our team deleted and removed that information. The malicious edit was made by a source that attempted several other hateful edits. Our security team has confirmed no additional attempts were successful.”
“We will continue to investigate this act and make appropriate changes to further limit the potential for future human error,” Mapbox added.
[Also read: Russell Senate building renamed for John McCain in Google Maps]
