The popular app Snapchat showed New York City as “Jewtropolis” for a period of time on Thursday.
The error was highlighted through various screenshots on social media:
https://twitter.com/clemmon19/status/1035141704507117570
https://twitter.com/dxn_14/status/1035105349794193408
Snapchat eventually tweeted that their third-party platform, Mapbox, was hacked.
Hey Dan! 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
Buzzfeed noted that Mapbox is a platform used by several other apps and websites, such as Zillow and Citibike, meaning that New York City also appeared as “Jewtropolis” on those platforms as well.
“Mapbox has a zero-tolerance policy against hate speech and any malicious edits to our maps,” Mapbox said in a statement. “This morning, the label of ‘New York City’ on our maps was vandalized. 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.”
The act of hate speech that has affected our map users has been resolved. We will not accept hatred on our platform. We removed the attack within an hour of discovery and this is cleared on all maps at this time. Full statement here: https://t.co/V8KWZTSeT9 pic.twitter.com/3tyOmyWAlv
— Mapbox (@Mapbox) August 30, 2018
Some saw the humor in the situation:
https://twitter.com/LJSilverman1/status/1035166421049921536
Fear not fair citizens of Jewtropolis.
Super Jew is here to save the day! pic.twitter.com/b8YlumtdRN— Rabbi Mordechai Lightstone (@Mottel) August 30, 2018
