Apple has removed most of the towns and villages in Lebanon from Apple maps? | Hacker News Reader

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

maps.apple.com

357 pointsthepasswordis187 comments

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

people are not upset at Apple.

people are upset at Israel for physically erasing entire nations: babies, children, civilians, elderly, women, infrastructure, etc.

once you and all israel apologist understand the gravity of the crimes, it will be easier to understand people's reaction

Ah yes the classic "look at how they murdered the children!" tactic.

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

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.

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.

US government demanded it, not requested it

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...

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

> 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.

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

And has been for many, many years.

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.

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.

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

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.

A very expensive and risky pier that still just delivered the aid to an IDF base inside Gaza and not to Gazans (or aid orgs) directly. Based on a plan from an Israeli think tank...

Blame the Israeli public for not wanting to feed their enemy.

And not letting themselves or anyone else feed them either, huh?

It was so bad they had to post pictures of starving Syrians.

absolutely do blame the Israeli public for their state murdering innocent civilians in other countries (Palestine, Iran, Lebanon, Syria). It's their state, they should do something about it.

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

Yea, that user made the most ridiculous statement.

I think the Onion did a piece saying something like "Netanyahu dead, Trump must go back to being the only president of the United States", and while satire, is a bit enlightening of the actual situation here.

In the case of the "Gulf of America" thing there was a clear and open statement by the executive that they wanted the maps changed (note that even in the US the name is still legally "Gulf of Mexico"). Apple and Google both decided to acquiesce to curry favor.

TMK there is no current government order to eliminate large swaths of Lebanon from maps. So the fact that Apple is doing this (seemingly on its own, despite all other mapping services reflecting the original place names) is the thing I'm explicitly calling out as being weird.

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

They hardly have electricity so there's nobody to fight back really. The international community left them to die after that big explosion and the country has been scraping by ever since.

It descended into the same malaise as every other islamic country without oil aka wealth transfer by the worlds economy?

What's a little occupied, extra-territorial buffer zone between respectful neighbors? Nothing says "I respect your sovereignty" more leveling all buildings to the ground. Golan now, there's nothing to see here.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

And I’m not just talking about Apple Maps.

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?"

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.

Captured by whom?

This comes to mind: https://nypost.com/2025/03/19/us-news/benjamin-netanyahu-gif...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Israel_Lobby_and_U.S._Fore...

You mean the lobby that was outspent by Hungary last year?

Israel

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

it... feels... more captured than usual, lately

Not to those who have been on the receiving end. It's just less concealed, which in some ways is quite refreshing.

gross

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.

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.

> Netanyahu and Putin are two war criminals according to International Court of Justice.

You mean the ICC, not the ICJ. The latter is a separate body that handles disputes between states.

Both have warrants for arrest by the ICC but note that neither Putin nor Netanyahu have been tried or convicted by the International Criminal Court.

> Although Trump threatened the ICJ

I’ve wondered, in the immediate aftermath of his recent genocidal threats, whether Mr. Trump was feeling left out of that club.

Already in 2002 US passed the "American Service-Members' Protection Act" that allows USA to deploy military to prevent U.S. or allied officials and military personnel from being prosecuted or detained by the ICC.

It passed via bypartisan vote well in time before US launched the illegal invasion of Iraq in which it committed various war crimes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

[flagged]

You are assuming I didn’t know before this news came out.

It seems like people are asking, and the answer is that these towns and villages have indeed never been on Apple Maps:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47744594

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

and if stop fixating on South Lebanon and go to other places where israel is not invading and destroying villages, let's say Syria, you'll notice the exact same issue: https://imgur.com/8p1ANAZ

so your argument actually go against what you attempt to demonstrate.

now why is apple bad at maps in this area and possibly other areas elsewhere in the world is a different matter.

Just check literally any Lebanese social media site?

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?

> 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?

[flagged]

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.

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.

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.

Correct

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

There is no perhaps.

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?

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?

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'.

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.

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...

Any justification given by Apple?

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.

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

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

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...

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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.

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

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.

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

[flagged]

With US-made munitions

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

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.

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?”

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

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.

What the fuck is a islamo supremacist? This is a non-sequitor invented by low brow fox news pundits that makes no fucking sense.

There is no such thing. I'll accept that Iran's model is a bit weird but there's definitely no supremacy nor expansionism going on in the name of some book or some psychopath's mind (like Netanyahu)

The only ethno-supremacists are the Israelis and the whole world is watching the Greater Israel Project unfold before their very eyes. It's concerning and probably unsustainable.

I don’t think Israelis have heard of the “Greater Israel Project”. Sounds like scaremongering designed to defend the indefensible (Hezbollah, Hamas, Iran, etc)

Hilarious and typical. Bibi mentions it all the time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Israel

Tell me you know nothing of the regional history without telling me you know nothing of the regional history. Search “eretz yisrael”

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

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

Just. Fucking. Look. At. The. History.

This is not that much controversial for most historians.

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

Starring Gal Gadot and Mojtaba's octopus.

Zionist Occupied App

Another reason to buy a Chinese android phone.

Why is this flagged?

mass flagging by the entire shtetl

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!

[flagged]

Reply on news.ycombinator.com