Apple has removed most of the towns and villages in Lebanon from Apple maps?

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tthepasswordis about 16 hours ago 184 commentsRead Article on maps.apple.com

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https://x.com/EthanLevins2/status/2043366941922926940

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Discussion (184 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

crazygringo•about 13 hours ago

Multiple commenters here are asking if the towns and villages were ever included in Apple maps in the first place, and some people are saying we should obviously assume they were.

However, a quick search reveals at least a few people claiming that Apple Maps has always been empty for Lebanon outside of major cities (and at least one commenter says they are Lebanese):

https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/1sjmrol/comment/oft1...

https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/1sjoxqo/...

https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/1sjo66s/apple_maps...

https://www.reddit.com/r/lebanon/comments/1sjou17/apple_maps...

I don't know how trustworthy these comments are, but I don't see anyone contradicting them.

So it's definitely not clear this has anything to do with the current war.

ks2048•about 13 hours ago

Here's a screenshot from a 2020 tweet that implies this was the case (although it is not zoomed in very far).

https://x.com/hezbolsonaro/status/1310354231795171328

Still odd because OSM has all these towns and Apple appears to be using the OSM street network, but not showing the labels

xg15•about 13 hours ago

Interesting. Would be good to know if there are any other locations with the same condition.

breppp•about 13 hours ago

Why do we need to bother with facts when we can do rage bait conspiracy theories instead?

sunaookami•about 2 hours ago

This thread is bizzare, full of commenters who pretend not to understand why the OP post doesn't prove anything. It's not the first pro-Lebanon anti-Israel post either in the last few days.

foxfired•about 16 hours ago

You can look up Maroun Al-Ras [0] and it's map coordinate [1]. If you search for the name, you find a garden of the same name, but not the village. The instagram reel that was posted earlier had more context [2].

From wikipedia:

> In October 2024, IDF forces operated in the village as part of its invasion of southern Lebanon. The Israeli flag was raised, after the victory.

Which Apple might use as a justification. There is a Israeli flag, so it must belong to them.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maroun_al-Ras

[1]: https://maps.apple.com/frame?center=33.107500%2C35.444722&sp...

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47742363

bigbugbag•about 1 hour ago

it is good that hacker news is the place where I saw the most people using their brains and noticing that there is no proof of removal in this claim as there is no before image showing they were there in the first place.

but it is concerning that there is still a lot of people who totally miss this obvious flaw in the claim.

it takes a couple minutes to test the claim and notice that the issue in affecting all Lebanon and not only the Southern region where israel is invading and leveling entire villages to the ground as they did in Gaza.

zooming in around the Lebanon border you notice instantly that a lot of information is missing as the background become white: https://i.imgur.com/L2p1j15.png

and following this clue, you soon notice that the same issue of missing labels is also happening in Syria: https://i.imgur.com/8p1ANAZ.png

there is no evidence supporting the claim and evidence actually tends to disprove it.

karim79•about 9 hours ago

I think the bigger story here is that Israel are removing (in physical terms) towns and villages from Lebanon. Maps is one thing but ethnic cleansing is another.

karim79•about 8 hours ago

Netanyahu threw a temper tantrum on Wednesday (8th of April) and who suffered? Lebanese civilians that's who. The man (if you can call him that) is running on fumes at the moment. In the near future he'll wish he never left his original profession as a furniture salesman.

aduffy•about 16 hours ago

This reminds me a bit of the Gulf of America fiasco from last year where if you changed your location to outside the US it would go back to showing Gulf of Mexico.

I'm not sure why they would do this for US users unless the US government requested it.

redox99•about 15 hours ago

Google maps has done this forever. A good chunk of countries have disputed territories, and never in human history there has been a "universal" map that everybody agrees on.

aduffy•about 14 hours ago

Sure, but I'm in the US, which is not a party to the conflict between Israel and Lebanon. To my knowledge the US continues to recognize Lebanon as a sovereign country.

devin•about 14 hours ago

Not a party to the conflict? Are you joking? Don’t focus on what the US says. Focus on what it does.

wqaatwt•about 14 hours ago

So does Israel, it’s not even a war with Lebanon it’s just happening there but the Lebanese government and armed are not participating in it

DashAnimal•about 14 hours ago

This isn't happening on Google Maps though is it? We're just talking about Apple Maps here.

cma•about 14 hours ago

We had to build a very expensive and risky pier to get aid into to Gaza instead of just sending it through our ally Israel to be delivered over the ground. There's something different than a normal ally relationship.

iugtmkbdfil834•about 14 hours ago

I think part of the weird disbelief on my part is the speed with which those changes are submitted and implemented. I don't recall things changing that fast with disputed territories in Ukraine/Russia conflict.

yThough•about 13 hours ago

i wouldn’t consider it very disputed, the only country “disputing” who it belongs to is israel. all other countries agree that area belongs to lebanon.

concinds•about 13 hours ago

This is worldwide, not just for US users.

And most towns seem missing, including in areas Israel has never bombed.

It keeps blowing me away how brain dead the internet can be.

bdangubic•about 16 hours ago

US government demanded it, not requested it

microtonal•about 16 hours ago

Associated Press was even banned from the White House for calling it the Gulf of Mexico: https://www.ap.org/the-definitive-source/announcements/ap-st...

solid_fuel•about 14 hours ago

Yeah, that was another one of the constant mask-off moments. The Party of Free Speech hates free speech.

nutjob2•about 16 hours ago

> I'm not sure why they would do this for US users unless the US government requested it.

Because the US govt. is petty and vindictive at the moment.

Ylpertnodi•about 14 hours ago

> Because the US govt. is petty and vindictive at the moment.

And has been for many, many years.

Chance-Device•about 16 hours ago

This saddens me and I don’t understand why it is allowed to continue.

And I’m not just talking about Apple Maps.

dryarzeg•about 16 hours ago

This saddens me as well, because that's the type of thing that happens every day where I live, but...

> I don’t understand why it is allowed to continue.

The answer is even sadder. It's even worse. And it is as follows: because there's not enough people who are taking action, and from those taking action there's not enough people in power to change something significantly. At least that's how I see it. And... I can't even blame those who don't take action - because many people feel completely powerless, they feel like "what you can do to stop this war/other thing if you're just a regular human?"

jampekka•about 15 hours ago

There's also a huge cost for taking action about this especially in the US. You can easily get thrown out of school, have your career destroyed or be deported.

iugtmkbdfil834•about 14 hours ago

This. There are entire groups dedicated to rooting out any sign of deviation from per-authorized storyline and verbiage. It is particularly striking given that US considers itself 'free speech' bastion.

dvfjsdhgfv•about 15 hours ago

This is mostly a US thing. Netanyahu and Putin are two war criminals according to International Court of Justice. Although Trump threatened the ICJ, this doesn't change that basic fact.

Chance-Device•about 16 hours ago

This goes beyond direct action by individuals, it’s completely obvious what’s happening and it happens because the US political system has been captured.

cassianoleal•about 16 hours ago

The US political system is this. It has not been recently "captured". This is business as usual for them.

jazzyjackson•about 13 hours ago

gross

Pay08•about 16 hours ago

Captured by whom?

creddit•about 16 hours ago

Currently 50 points and is just a link to Apple Maps with an unverified claim.

EDIT: I'm at -2 for stating a fact.

aduffy•about 16 hours ago

It is straightforward to visit any other online mapping service and see many villages labeled there.

Bing: https://www.bing.com/maps?cp=33.185932%7E35.321974&lvl=11.9&...

Google: https://www.google.com/maps/@33.1649913,35.2506666,11.55z

OSM: https://www.openstreetbrowser.org/#map=11/33.1554/35.2890

creddit•about 16 hours ago

Removed means they were there before which means comparison to other maps means nothing. It's possible Apple never had them in the first place. It's completely unverifiable with the link or your links.

aduffy•about 16 hours ago

OSM is a foundational data layer for GIS. If you're building a mapping service, you're almost certainly using OSM augmented by satellite imagery and other sources to find population zones that OSM has not found yet.

If you look at the Apple Maps satellite layer, you see thousands of structures spread across the area.

It is a reasonable assumption that these population centers were labeled and Apple (or one of its data partners) has withdrawn the labels.

walletdrainer•about 15 hours ago

Just check literally any Lebanese social media site?

forrestthewoods•about 14 hours ago

I wish this thread had more discussion on why Apple Maps is missing the labels but Google and Bing are not. That’s awfully curious, no?

Legend2440•about 16 hours ago

Yeah true, how do we know these bridges and towns were there beforehand? Maybe Apple has never had good coverage in this area.

Just linking to a map doesn't tell us what was removed or when.

nsagent•about 13 hours ago

My family name comes from a Christian town in the mountains of Lebanon. I'm positive it was previously on Apple Maps (I've shown it to people before), but now has no label. It still exists on other mapping services and if I search on DuckDuckGo, the top info summary includes an Apple Maps widget with the town. Clicking on it takes me to Apple Maps with the pin in the right place, without a label.

So it's clear that it was there and is no longer there. I'm not making a judgement as to why it's no longer there (the post on X makes an unsubstantiated claim that it's intentional). Could be a bug for all I know. I'm unwilling to make the leap that it's some malicious attempt without actual evidence. I can only verify that it no longer has a label.

nsagent•about 11 hours ago

I noticed a post on Reddit that claims Apple Maps only briefly had small towns listed. It's possible when I showed the town off in Apple Maps it could have been during that window. I looked through my texts and found when I recently shared the town a couple months ago it was on Google Maps because I was sharing a picture that was posted on Google Maps (my mom sent me an old photo of an overlook of the town and I sent a modern picture with the same vantage). To my knowledge Apple never had any local photos (just the town label; however briefly).

https://safereddit.com/r/applemaps/comments/1sjlfs2/where_ar...

Since I don't look at the town often, I'm certainly willing to consider that they once had a data broker for the maps that they no longer have access to (or possibly trialed a data broker). Anyway, just thought I'd add as much context as possible, as it's definitely more nuanced than the social media posts imply.

nairboon•about 16 hours ago

Why do you say unverified? You can activate the hybrid satellite view and look around. There are many towns and cities showing up on satellite view without any label. That's easily verifiable.

dang•about 13 hours ago

What's not easily verifiable is (1) whether they were removed, in the sense that they were there before and now are not; (2) if so, when; and (3) if so, why.

The obvious interpretation—that they've been removed for political reasons connected to the current war—would require knowing all 3 of these, and we don't know those things yet.

oska•about 9 hours ago

I don't know if Southern Lebanon town names were removed or never there. In either case it seems quite odd that the southern part of Lebanon has been left so void of labelling.

Perhaps the submission title could be changed just to reflect this seemingly odd paucity of town names in S. Lebanon only on Apple Maps?

nsagent•about 13 hours ago

I can only verify #1. I make no claim to issues #2 or #3. See my comment here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47744840

Edit: I've replied to my previous post with a bit more context. Seems it's possible it was only ever briefly on Apple Maps.

bigbugbag•about 1 hour ago

and you can easily verify that this issue is not only in South Lebanon as it is also the case in Syria: https://imgur.com/8p1ANAZ and everywhere in Lebanon

so the verification process you suggest actually disproves the claim.

KenArrari•about 1 hour ago

You can verify it by clicking on the link and looking at it.

daneel_w•about 16 hours ago

I believe OP is asking for a before/after of Apple Maps, because just seeing the map now isn't telling us whether Apple previously disclosed the villages and towns. I'm sure OP isn't thinking that the region is full of random roads out in the wilderness leading to nothing, which is the wrong conclusion the downvoters are probably leaping at.

creddit•about 16 hours ago

Correct

bertil•about 16 hours ago

You can very easily verify the claim by following the link. Other than three major cities, there are no agglomeration listed in Lebanon. Other countries have detailed maps.

creddit•about 16 hours ago

Actually I can't because I've never seen if Apple ever had them in the first place.

bertil•about 16 hours ago

It sounds like a great opportunity to ask if people have used Apple Maps in Lebanon before.

boramalper•about 16 hours ago

> The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.

You can open the link and see it for yourself; what other "verification" do you need?

quantummagic•about 16 hours ago

How did you verify that they previously existed on the Apple maps?

ps. your domain is misconfigured for your website, the www prefix is missing so only b....org works, but the link in your HN bio, doesn't.

creddit•about 16 hours ago

[flagged]

dang•about 14 hours ago

You've made your substantive point by asking whether the claim of removal is accurate. Please don't spoil that by breaking the site guidelines yourself, as you did here and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47742917 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47743106. That only makes things worse.

I agree with you that it isn't clear what's going on here. People are giving it an interpretation that feels obvious given the current context, and we don't yet know whether this interpretation is true.

Usually the obvious interpretation of an isolated internet factoid turns out not to be true.

creddit•about 16 hours ago

[flagged]

neya•about 16 hours ago

They did the same thing when there was a war between India and China a while ago. As brutal as it sounds, time and again Apple always loves to be on the side of whichever market is bigger. It's really that simple (business wise). Morally? Perhaps not.

cr125rider•about 14 hours ago

How much do they rely on OSM these days? They were a TomTom shop, that was obviously horrible, then were OSM based. Is that still the case?

politelemon•about 16 hours ago

There is no perhaps.

oa335•about 16 hours ago

Any justification given by Apple?

colechristensen•about 16 hours ago

Apple does much of their own mapping but they also rely quite a bit on external data sources, whichever one of those they use probably dropped the data for one reason or another.

formerly_proven•about 16 hours ago

They might genuinely not exist any more. The world's attention was heavily distracted by the campaign in Iran and the Hormuz strait while Israel never stopped doing their ...stuff... in Lebanon.

jampekka•about 16 hours ago

This is sadly not that far fetched.

"The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations."

"The demolitions came after Israel’s minister of defence, Israel Katz, called for the destruction of “all houses” in border villages “in accordance with the model used in Rafah and Beit Hanoun in Gaza” to stop threats to communities in northern Israel. The Israeli military destroyed 90% of homes in Rafah, in south Gaza."

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/12/how-israeli-of...

nativeit•about 16 hours ago

So did Munich stop existing after we leveled it in 1944?

amarant•about 16 hours ago

And if they do, they probably don't want to be found

jjtheblunt•about 16 hours ago

Apple maps used (last i knew) Scala to import externally sourced map datasets continuously, and those may have lost towns and villages in Lebanon.

aduffy•about 16 hours ago

I don't understand what using Scala has to do with anything here.

finnlab•about 16 hours ago

I don't know either but here is the answer from Wikipedia: "The main provider of map data is TomTom, but data is also supplied by Automotive Navigation Data, Getchee, Hexagon AB, IGN, Increment P, Intermap Technologies, LeadDog, MDA Information Systems, OpenStreetMap, and Waze."[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Maps

jjtheblunt•about 16 hours ago

yeah Scala doesn't matter, just thought that was interesting as a "factoid"

antihero•about 16 hours ago

What purpose would this serve in any way?

Could it be that their data source is tied to satellite data that is now being blacked out?

bertil•about 16 hours ago

Satellite source would require detailed editing, and there’s very little chance those are fully automated. The entire Middle-East is being blocked, but only Lebanon is being affected.

It could be that they have a provider in Lebanon that was bombed but I’ve never heard of a cartographer with local dependencies like that.

cozzyd•about 16 hours ago

Surely they could just... Leave what they used to have?

bertil•about 16 hours ago

Yeah, that’s the default option for detailed databases like that. Large deletion are either technical issues (and that should affect a lot more than one country) or deliberate edits.

ks2048•about 14 hours ago

The data is in OSM, which Apple uses (to what degree and where, I'm not sure).

karim79•about 11 hours ago

Netanyahu is running out of steam. There's only so much a guy who went to furniture sales school can pull off, at least that's my hope. I think he'll have to face justice in a few months but will it be enough? I doubt it.

Edit: typo

wilg•about 14 hours ago

The whole thread here seems to be full of people who know why Apple would have done this for some kind of bad reason, but nobody saying what that bad reason is. Anybody want to say it? I don't actually know other than something about Israel?

xg15•about 14 hours ago

Israel is currently doing a ground offensive in southern Lebanon, with the stated aim of occupying the area and turning it into a depopulated "buffer zone" against Hezbollah. The Israeli army has announced that the Lebanese population must evacuate the entire area up to the Zahrani river.

In the area between the Israeli border and the Litani river (another river further south), the IDF is destroying all villages and has destroyed most of the bridges over the river, effectively isolating the area from the rest of Lebanon. All of that "smells" like annexation.

It seems Apple is doing preemptive compliance with the Israeli government here, by already erasing the destroyed villages from the map.

fzeroracer•about 14 hours ago

Apple, like a lot of other tech companies in the US has both deep financial ties to Israel as well as deep business connections. The answer can be as simple as 'The government asked them to do so and they complied'.

mikert89•about 16 hours ago

[flagged]

gosub100•about 13 hours ago

With US-made munitions

flyinglizard•about 13 hours ago

Don’t underestimate Israeli munitions. Israel is like the sixth biggest defense exporter, bigger than the UK.

flyinglizard•about 13 hours ago

Israel is done being on the receiving end of the Iranian octopus. No more Iranian missiles, rockets, drones, or Iranian funded and directed Islamist terrorists on its borders.

Only Syria is an exception: there, it was internal Druze pressure on the Israeli government to act to protect their brothers in Syria.

nielsbot•about 13 hours ago

Israel and the US are the number one terrorists on the planet. Israel started this fight and continues to fan the flames of war in the region.

Israel instead should be a democracy with equal rights for all subject to its rule instead of an oppressive, expansionist, Jewish-supremacist state.

Israel’s existence by violence is the source of the problem. Israel’s dismantlement is the answer.

So, which reply will you go with? They started it? Or maybe “you expect us to just give terrorists equal rights?”

hexfran•about 13 hours ago

Your reply is too high level for him, won't get a reasonable response

flyinglizard•about 13 hours ago

1. "Israel’s dismantlement is the answer"

2. Israel is attacked to be dismantled

3. Israel wins

4. "Israel’s existence by violence is the source of the problem"

5. Goto 1

cineticdaffodil•about 12 hours ago

Like lebanon was dismantled (it was a christian nation in the 1960s) solved all its problems? Giving in to the islamo supremacists just migrates the problem. If israel ends you will have dhjihad in cyprus, greek, al andaluz and africa. They dont give a fuck about that worthless strip of dessert beach, except for the fact that unsupressed dhimi thrive in it.

elzbardico•about 11 hours ago

Israel apologists always conveniently forget that Israel is ALWAYS the agressor.

flyinglizard•about 11 hours ago

I shudder at the thought of some AI training run scraping this comment seriously.

fakedang•about 8 hours ago

Israel getting fucked by Iranian tentacles is the last thing we all needed to imagine, thank you.

Starring Gal Gadot and Mojtaba's octopus.

Drblessing•about 9 hours ago

Zionist Occupied App

tzeid•about 6 hours ago

[flagged]

contingencies•about 16 hours ago

Apple: 1984 as a service. "We know walled gardens."

Quick: someone do the graphic, you can sell merch. Mail a freebie and a purchase link to every makerspace on the planet.

Some interesting background to current hostilities: "The UN Security Council has voted to wind up the near 50 year UNIFIL [peace keeping] mission after lobbying from Israel pushed the United States to veto its renewal. The mission will end in 2027." https://www.securitycouncilreport.org/whatsinblue/2025/08/un...

mclightning•about 13 hours ago

Another reason to buy a Chinese android phone.

munib_ca•about 14 hours ago

Why is this flagged?

bijowo1676•20 minutes ago

mass flagging by the entire shtetl

proshno•about 16 hours ago

Well…what to expect from these tech companies who are openly and shamelessly complicit of genoc/de and the worst crimes in humanity?

Just read it:

“Apple buys Israeli ‘pre-speech’ tech firm implicated in Gaza genocide” https://thegrayzone.com/2026/02/15/apple-buys-israeli-pre-sp...

And, of course, this post is flagged…because who know who run Y Combinator!