According to a report, users can't edit Maps in Russia and Ukraine. Since February 24th, all user-submitted places and contributions, such as photos, videos and business information in those countries, have been deleted. The tech giant came to the decision out of an abundance of caution after people claimed that the Russian military had been relying on pins created by users on Maps to coordinate air strikes on Ukraine.
There are posts on websites with pictures of maps showing pins. The tags created on February 28th matched the locations of the missile strikes on the cities of Kyiv and Kharkiv, according to people.
The publication was told that some of the user edits were made a year ago. The Russian invasion disabled user contributions to Maps. A company spokesman said:
"Out of an abundance of caution, we are removing user contributions like photos, videos, reviews and business information and all user-submitted places from Google Maps in Ukraine, Russia and Belarus since the invasion began, and are temporarily blocking new edits from being made."
Live traffic data on Maps in Ukraine was removed a few days ago by the tech giant. Following the European Commission's announcement that it would ban what it calls "Kremlin's media machine" in the EU, it blocked the channels of Russian state-owned media outlets. Tech companies responded to calls to limit their services in Russia by blocking access to the state-owned media outlets. Facebook took down fake accounts spreading Russian misinformation and restricted access to its platform. Apple stopped all product sales in Russia and disabled traffic data in Ukraine after a request from the Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister.
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