A number of social media users have been claiming that the names of several towns and villages in southern Lebanon have mysteriously disappeared from Apple Maps.
“As Israel invades, they are already setting the stage to justify occupation,” wrote Ethan Levins, a US user who presents himself as an “independent journalist”, in a post published on X on April 12. The post, which garnered more than 12 million views, features a screenshot of southern Lebanon on Apple Maps, on which the area appears largely unlabeled.
Similar claims have also been shared on TikTok, Facebook and Instagram.
Coverage gaps predating the current war
When reached for comment by the Observers team, Apple denied the allegations. They said the locations in question were never listed on the map, adding that the most detailed version of Apple Maps is currently unavailable in Lebanon, as the global rollout is still ongoing.
Lending weight to this explanation is a thread on Apple’s support community published in September 2019 – more than six years before the current conflict between Lebanon and Israel broke out. A Lebanese user had already pointed out that he could not use the navigation features on their iPhone: “Whenever I try to use Apple Maps for directions, it says no direction available.”
Another online user had answered that Apple “may not have processed routing information in Lebanon, either because they haven’t licensed the data, or they haven't collected sufficient mapping data to be able to provide reliable routing guidance.” He also provided a link to Apple’s official page detailing Maps availability by country. A look at the same link today reveals that Lebanon is missing from the list of supported regions.
This indicates that the data wasn't recently removed, but rather that these towns and villages were never featured in Apple Maps.
This article has been translated from the original in French.
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