As the sanctions imposed on Russia by companies and organizations continue to increase, efforts are underway to help protect the civilian population in Ukraine as much as they can. We have seen an example of these from Google and Apple recently.
Google had disabled the live traffic feature in Ukraine after repeated attacks on areas with heavy traffic on Google Maps. Then Apple took action and stopped the product sales in Russia and removed the live traffic and accidents feature in Ukraine. Today, a similar application came from Snapchat.
Snapchat turned off the Snap Map feature for Ukraine
Snapchat users can see where users are on the ‘Snap Map’ and share their public posts around the world, can discover where they are more concentrated. Although this heatmap is a feature that users like, it could have dangerous consequences considering the situation in Ukraine. For this reason, Snapchat turned off the Snap Map feature for users in Ukraine in order to avoid a situation similar to what Google experienced.
Considering that Russia will want to see where the citizens in the region are concentrated and will intensify their attacks there, it is of great importance for companies to have such practices to prevent this. Thanks to the feature that Snapchat also closed for this purpose, it will no longer be possible to detect where users are more concentrated in Ukraine. We hope that the war will end as soon as possible and no more people will get hurt before we have to see more of these and similar moves from companies.
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