Hack causes major apps to show anti-Semitic name
NEW YORK (AP) — Technology users got a surprise Thursday morning when their social and lifestyle apps seemingly labeled the United States’ most populous city with an anti-Semitic header.
A number of people posted screenshots on Twitter showing “New York City” had been relabeled “Jewtropolis” on the Mapbox map used by companies and services such as Snapchat parent Snap, Citi Bike and Foursquare.
Mapbox, a provider of digital map technology, said it suffered a “malicious edit” by a person who tried to make more than 80 changes to its maps’ data in a “disgusting anti-Semitic tirade” across New York and other parts of the world. All were quarantined for human review by the company’s artificial-intelligence powered algorithms, and only one edit made it into the actual map for less than an hour before being deleted.
“It shows that no matter how smart you build your AI, at the human review stage you can still have a point of failure,” said Mapbox CEO Eric Gundersen.