Did Apple remove Lebanon’s villages from its maps?

An online claim suggesting that Apple Maps, the web mapping service developed by Apple, has removed village names in southern Lebanon has gone viral.

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

Some posts making the claims have racked up millions of views, triggered explainer videos and sparked a heated debate on whether Apple has intentionally altered its maps to remove the names.

Euronews’ fact-checking team, The Cube, found that one of the posts was shared by a pro-Iranian X account based in South Asia, which has repeatedly spread misleading claims about Iran’s military power in the war.

The allegations come amid heightened regional tensions, with Israel carrying out air strikes in Lebanon, prompting rocket attacks from the militant group Hezbollah. A ten-day ceasefire deal between Israel and Lebanon came into effect on Friday.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said she welcomed the deal, stressing a “path to permanent peace” is needed.

Some users peddling the claim accused Apple of supporting Israel’s war effort or even committing “digital genocide” by erasing place names from its product.

But has Apple intentionally removed Lebanese village names from its mapping service? We’ve taken a look at the evidence for and against the claim.

No evidence names were removed

The Cube examined Apple Maps’ coverage of Lebanon as depicted in the viral posts. The maps show local businesses, salons and some street names, but the names of villages and towns are not there.

Compare this to Google Maps, which shows a more detailed view of the area, including village and town names.

There are indeed gaps in Apple Maps near the city of Tyre on the Lebanese southern coast, which has been the target of Israeli strikes and evacuation warnings.

However, this alone does not indicate the names were, as some online posts suggest, intentionally removed.

A spokesperson for Apple told tech magazine Wired Middle East that the names weren’t removed from the map. Rather, they had never been there in the first place.

Users on internet forums and Lebanese residents consulted by The Cube said that Apple Maps has long had a patchy reputation in the area, with most preferring to consult Google Maps.

A discussion thread posted in September 2019 on Apple’s website also complains that: “I live in Lebanon, and whenever I try to use Apple Maps for directions, it says no directions available.”

Apple’s website confirms that Lebanon is not on the list of countries that have certain maps features, such as Turn-by-Turn navigation, which gives users detailed instructions to their destination.

Currently, the viral posts do not show any evidence proving that the village names were previously visible on Apple Maps and then later removed. Instead, they rely on current screenshots of the maps, which do not show a before-and-after comparison.

Łukasz Prażmo, CEO at GIS-Expert, a Poland-based software development firm that implements spatial information systems in public and private companies, told The Cube that “Without ‘before’ screenshots, it cannot be definitively proven that ‘removal’ [took place].”

Abdallah Bsaibes, founder of Beirut-based geospatial firm GeoSpatialMinds Group, agreed that missing labels do not confirm that data has been removed.

“Absence of place names on a map is not enough to confirm they were removed, as labels are often controlled by scale, styling, and display rules,” he said.

“To verify true removal, you must check the underlying data, such as APIs or datasets, and compare across multiple platforms.”

Apple Maps’ Lebanon dataset also remains in a “beta” stage, meaning it’s less reliable than its competitors, according to Bsaibes.

How does Apple Maps work and why are names missing?

Although Apple Maps does show more detailed coverage in neighbouring Syria and Israel, patchy coverage and missing names are not unique to Lebanon.

The Cube found comparable gaps in other countries, such as Jordan, Belize and Tibet, implying the issue is linked to the company’s software rather than a political decision.

The Cube reached out to Apple for details on what datasets make up its mapping system, but did not receive a response in time for publication.

Public reporting suggests that Apple Maps originally relied on third-party providers such as TomTom and OpenStreetMaps. It also integrates business reviews and other data from third-party services such as Yelp and Foursquare.

In 2023, reports suggested that Apple was trying to move away from using brokers and began to generate Apple Maps using data directly from iPhones and its own mapping cars, which travel around the world and collect data that supports its ‘look around’ feature. This feature is not currently available in Lebanon, according to Apple’s own website.

Roland Abi Najem, a Kuwait-based cyber security and AI consultant, says gaps in Lebanon are likely the result of limited data collection and a lack of investment in the country rather than deliberate removal.

“These villages were not already on Apple Maps,” he said, adding that Apple focuses its detailed mapping efforts on markets such as Europe and North America, where usage is stronger.

According to Prażmo, one of Apple Maps’ primary sources for Lebanon is OpenStreetMap.org. “The road network layout in Lebanon and Syria on Apple Maps appears to be similar to the OpenStreetMap dataset. This strongly suggests that Apple is already using OSM as its primary source for infrastructure in this region.”

It’s unclear, Prażmo says, why Apple wouldn’t have included detailed village names from the same open-source dataset in its product.

It is, however, also feasible that “Apple simply never purchased or integrated a high-resolution ‘ village-level ‘ dataset for Lebanon due to licensing costs, technical errors, or a lack of priority for that specific market.”