New York City was briefly renamed “Jewtropolis” in the map feature of messaging service Snapchat after online mischief-makers apparently hacked its system.
The Snap Map feature allows users to content by geographical region.
Whatever mapping service that Snapchat, CitiBike, StreetEasy, (perhaps others) use — it seems — is showing New York City as "Jewtropolis" this morning. pic.twitter.com/nsVe8goLyo
— Micah Grimes (@MicahGrimes) August 30, 2018
Any reason Manhattan is now “Jewtropolis”???? @Snapchat pic.twitter.com/IdXSrSa5gH
— Jon Scharfman (@JonScharfman) August 30, 2018
The error was spotted by a number of Twitter users earlier on Thursday. The “Jewtropolis” branding on the city could be seen on Apple, Android and Windows versions of Snap Map.
Snapchat blamed the blunder on an apparent hack of the third-party mapping software that powers Snap Maps and other GPS maps like it.
The service’s official support team tweeted: “Snap Map relies on third party mapping data which has unfortunately been subject to vandalism.
@pisceschrist Thanks for bringing this to our attention. Snap Map relies on third party mapping data which has unfortunately been subject to vandalism. We are working with our partner Mapbox to get this fixed immediately.
— Snapchat Support (@snapchatsupport) August 30, 2018
“We are working with our partner Mapbox to get this fixed immediately.”
A number of other apps which share the third-party mapping data – including StreetEasy, Zillow, CitiBike and Jump Bikes – suffered the same malfunction.
