Snapchat disables public "heatmap" for Ukraine

Snap has announced that it will temporarily disable Snapchat's "heatmap" feature for Ukraine, so the app no longer shows how many snaps are being taken in specific locations. The company says the move is "a security precaution" and that there will still be a selected public source of snapshots submitted by Ukrainians.

Normally, Snap Map displays a colour code to show how many people post public images in an area. In practice, that means you can get a good idea of where Snapchat users are concentrated. While this publicly available data isn't usually meaningful (not surprisingly, more people are posting from downtown Seattle than from the nearby national forest), in a theatre of war where Russia may want to track evacuations or movements of citizens, it's probably for the best. that the function is disabled.

Other companies have taken similar steps to make it harder to track Ukrainians' movements: Google turned off live traffic information in Ukraine, as has Apple. Snap has also taken some additional steps following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. According to a company news post, it has stopped showing ads in Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine, and will not sell ad space to Russian entities.