Re:Apple Maps puts all buildings back in Gaza
by giancarlostoro on Monday November 02, 2026 @04:08PM
(#50343785)
Are we just making assumptions? I've built up a few different mapping / GIS related projects over my career, and the satellite imagery can change on a whim, sometimes its spot on, other times its dated, the zoom can also affect it as well, you zoom in and its from years back, you zoom out slightly, and its from last week.
Has Apple made any remark about this to confirm? It would not surprise me if Apple just isn't even aware of this changing on their app. (For those unaware, they source their map data from various sources / vendors, as does Microsoft's Bing Maps.)
Re:Apple Maps puts all buildings back in Gaza
by dig1 on Monday November 02, 2026 @04:24PM
(#50343977)
> It wouldn’t surprise me if Apple simply isn’t aware that this has changed in its app.
Yet they were pretty quick to change Lake Ontario to Lake America. OTOH, if Apple has no idea what its own app is serving, that shows poor state of their monitoring system, right?
Re:Apple Maps puts all buildings back in Gaza
by vfosnar on Monday November 02, 2026 @05:13PM
(#50344667)
This is satellite imagery. Its common for this to be outdated af, especially outside of EU/US. It costs A LOT to process these compared to just switching a single label in a database.
If there's anything to worry about it's that MS will stop providing aerial imagery to https://www.hotosm.org/ as it seems they slowly give up on Bing maps altogether. Cool they atl donated em so far.
Re:Apple Maps puts all buildings back in Gaza
by OgsyedIE on Monday November 02, 2026 @04:12PM
(#50343840)
The deletion of place names, roads, business labels, etc throughout the southern half of Lebanon suggests that there's basically no way ignorance is involved.
Re:Apple Maps puts all buildings back in Gaza
by giancarlostoro on Monday November 02, 2026 @07:57PM
(#50346565)
You can 100% delete those without needing to update map data, my statement still stands, there's plenty of mainstream news sources that confirm that Apple has not updated their mapping data for the region since at least 2023. Google updated theirs in 2026 and one news org immediately compared Google Maps in the region vs Apple Maps in the region:
Re:Apple Maps puts all buildings back in Gaza
by slowin on Monday November 02, 2026 @05:22PM
(#50344780)
Why would Apple make a remark about this? You can literally go look for yourself and see they've done this. As another commenter pointed out, they almost immediately removed the names of ethnically cleansed towns from Southern Lebanon as Israel wiped them off the map.
> The account that posted the tweet is considered "satire" and antisemitic.
Re:Apple Maps puts all buildings back in Gaza
by giancarlostoro on Monday November 02, 2026 @07:56PM
(#50346552)
> Why would Apple make a remark about this? You can literally go look for yourself and see they've done this. As another commenter pointed out, they almost immediately removed the names of ethnically cleansed towns from Southern Lebanon as Israel wiped them off the map.
They have not updated the satelite images since 2023, this is a known documented thing, news sites have literally compared Apple Maps to Google Maps when they finally updated their images for the region in 2026. Apple can remove roads if it knows they're no longer around, it doesn't mean they have to update satellite images, which has been the case.
> Says who?
Literally browse posts by that account, it doesn't take very long to see antisemitism throughout the account. ...Why are you touchy about that?
Re:Apple Maps puts all buildings back in Gaza
by Pfhortune on Monday November 02, 2026 @04:01PM
(#50343683)
This is truly ghastly. I can excuse the capitulation on the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario as being issues of locality during a strange and broken administration. But this is... truly a horrifying, willing, cover for ongoing human-rights atrocities and violence. What justification exists for this?
Re:Apple Maps puts all buildings back in Gaza
by bitpush on Monday November 02, 2026 @04:19PM
(#50343911)
I want to believe this is a glitch but then again with Tim Cook (and Apple) has shown many times that he'll do whatever it takes for being in the good graces of the administration.
Re:Apple Maps puts all buildings back in Gaza
by OgsyedIE on Monday November 02, 2026 @04:11PM
(#50343827)
Are insurance firms wargaming the possibility of tech CEOs being invited to Brazil, Indonesia, etc as part of a grand investment summit only to have their persons and legal teams be arrested on arrival in a rugpull, whether the rugpulling country locks them up or dismembers them? Are flight corridors being specially set up to prevent fighter plane interception?
It's less ridiculous than you think. Surveying five frontier LLMs just now four of them gave a probability above 20% that it may happen this quarter.
Re:Apple Maps puts all buildings back in Gaza
by OgsyedIE on Monday November 02, 2026 @04:17PM
(#50343890)
The writing level of your comment history is between 7th and 8th grade and you appear to be totally unaware of the field of forecasting or the fact that LLMs are benchmarked on it, which suggests that of whatever holes there may be in my above comment, it'll only be somebody who isn't you that could say what they are.
Furthermore, a simple test of whether I typed out my above comment by hand (as I did) is whether each word is syntactically correct. The word rug-pulling is correct but I did not use it because I prefer the way rugpulling sounds inside the inner monologue as I type it. LLMs, however, are insistent on having perfect syntax, grammar and semantics, even if they keep fucking up the pragmatics.
Re:Apple Maps puts all buildings back in Gaza
by megous on Monday November 02, 2026 @04:07PM
(#50343772)
Google doesn't show reality in the north either. It's completely destroyed there too, in the same manner as in Rafah. East Gaza City is also leveled completely.
And it's not like they don't have the data. You can see in Google Earth "archive" how the whole map is a patchwork of randomly old tiles.
Re:Apple Maps puts all buildings back in Gaza
by Sabinus on Monday November 02, 2026 @05:33PM
(#50344961)
Because this is the new culture war topic. Check out OP's history.
This is their moral crusade.
Which would be good if it was aimed at compelling Israel to offer a decent 2 state deal and pull out the settlers (with much Israeli weeping and gnashing of teeth), and compelling the Palestinians to accept it.
But instead we get absolutist "Israel is evil and must be dissolved" and we're back to the cycle of violence.
Re:Apple Maps puts all buildings back in Gaza
by newspaper1 on Monday November 02, 2026 @05:53PM
(#50345199)
Being against genocide and Israel occupying my government isn't a "culture war", which is exactly why people across the political spectrum from left to right are anti-Zionist.
Re:Apple Maps puts all buildings back in Gaza
by giancarlostoro on Monday November 02, 2026 @08:02PM
(#50346610)
Because they're just taking a tweet by some antisemitism troll account (that is apparently "satire") at face value.
Apple not updating their maps since October 7th for that region is a documented thing. So much so, when Google updated theirs (who also froze theirs) they compared Apple Maps vs Google to see what's changed. The tweet is just rage bait.
Re:Apple Maps puts all buildings back in Gaza
by nailer on Monday November 02, 2026 @04:09PM
(#50343797)
> JUST IN: Apple Maps has put all the buildings back in Gaza, because the easiest solution to a genocide is to pretend it isn't happening.
There's no genocide in Gaza. From the WSJ:
> Net of people fleeing the country, the change in Gaza’s population is roughly zero. Not minus 40%. The population even appears to have grown in 2025, before the cease-fire in October.
Re:Apple Maps puts all buildings back in Gaza
by hackingonempty on Monday November 02, 2026 @05:59PM
(#50345282)
If you took some time to read and understand the definition of genocide from the Genocide Convention then you wouldn't make such statements. There is no change in population or minimum number of deaths required for a determination of genocide.
any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Re:Apple Maps puts all buildings back in Gaza
by hackingonempty on Monday November 02, 2026 @11:47PM
(#50348193)
Pizza delivery drivers are not a "national, ethnic, racial or religious group"
It is not a bizarre definition, it is an international treaty signed and ratified by Israel and the USA and 152 other states are parties. The same definition is found in 18 USC 1091 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1091
Has Apple made any remark about this to confirm? It would not surprise me if Apple just isn't even aware of this changing on their app. (For those unaware, they source their map data from various sources / vendors, as does Microsoft's Bing Maps.)
Yet they were pretty quick to change Lake Ontario to Lake America. OTOH, if Apple has no idea what its own app is serving, that shows poor state of their monitoring system, right?
If there's anything to worry about it's that MS will stop providing aerial imagery to https://www.hotosm.org/ as it seems they slowly give up on Bing maps altogether. Cool they atl donated em so far.
https://english.elpais.com/international/2026-09-29/gaza-bef...
> The account that posted the tweet is considered "satire" and antisemitic.
Says who?
They have not updated the satelite images since 2023, this is a known documented thing, news sites have literally compared Apple Maps to Google Maps when they finally updated their images for the region in 2026. Apple can remove roads if it knows they're no longer around, it doesn't mean they have to update satellite images, which has been the case.
> Says who?
Literally browse posts by that account, it doesn't take very long to see antisemitism throughout the account. ...Why are you touchy about that?
It's less ridiculous than you think. Surveying five frontier LLMs just now four of them gave a probability above 20% that it may happen this quarter.
Furthermore, a simple test of whether I typed out my above comment by hand (as I did) is whether each word is syntactically correct. The word rug-pulling is correct but I did not use it because I prefer the way rugpulling sounds inside the inner monologue as I type it. LLMs, however, are insistent on having perfect syntax, grammar and semantics, even if they keep fucking up the pragmatics.
And it's not like they don't have the data. You can see in Google Earth "archive" how the whole map is a patchwork of randomly old tiles.
This is their moral crusade. Which would be good if it was aimed at compelling Israel to offer a decent 2 state deal and pull out the settlers (with much Israeli weeping and gnashing of teeth), and compelling the Palestinians to accept it. But instead we get absolutist "Israel is evil and must be dissolved" and we're back to the cycle of violence.
Apple not updating their maps since October 7th for that region is a documented thing. So much so, when Google updated theirs (who also froze theirs) they compared Apple Maps vs Google to see what's changed. The tweet is just rage bait.
https://english.elpais.com/international/2026-09-29/gaza-bef...
There's no genocide in Gaza. From the WSJ:
> Net of people fleeing the country, the change in Gaza’s population is roughly zero. Not minus 40%. The population even appears to have grown in 2025, before the cease-fire in October.
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/free-expression/naza-has-nada-on...
It is not a bizarre definition, it is an international treaty signed and ratified by Israel and the USA and 152 other states are parties. The same definition is found in 18 USC 1091 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1091