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Ask HN: Can you help me remove the marks for the airstrikes from Google Maps?

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Re: Ask HN: Can you help me remove the marks for the airstrikes from Google Maps?

#121

Post by curl-up »

OP, why do you think a farm business (which gmaps are showing the location of) should be in the same place where farm land is?

These simply seem to be the addresses where a "farm business" is registered, as can be confirmed on a company-info-aggregator site [1]. I assume, in a lot of cases (especially for family owned farms), these are actually homes of the owners, to simplify all the mail and other paperwork. Actual farms can be located anywhere, probably outside of town. It might even be multiple farms (multiple pieces of land).

To answer your point about why these seem different (e.g. you cannot report them), I think it's because they are automatically scraped by google from the official company-info sites in each country. Seems to be a similar situation in other countries, as far as I can tell.

[1] this is the info of the first item on gmaps I get - address matches the location I'm shown https://youcontrol.com.ua/catalog/company_details/21897611/

Re: Ask HN: Can you help me remove the marks for the airstrikes from Google Maps?

#122

Post by mmsbdjjkvjj »

wzyoi wrote: post #20
Maxious wrote: post #9

> “Out of an abundance of caution, we are removing user contributions like photos, videos, reviews and business information and all user-submitted places from Google Maps in Ukraine, Russia and Belarus since the invasion began, and are temporarily blocking new edits from being made,” a Google spokesperson said. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/sarahemerson/russia-goo...

My mom mentioned this. They may be bypassing the ban.

No post body was provided.

Re: Ask HN: Can you help me remove the marks for the airstrikes from Google Maps?

#123

Post by social_quotient »

If this is really a thing why would google not probably know about it first and second why would google not just hide everything but roads views for a temporary period. No sat views, no places, nothing but roads. If you want to be fancy maybe roads and gas stations and food.

It seems like out of an abundance of caution you would not want your service to be used for this. Same for bing and other maps.

Am I missing something here?

Re: Ask HN: Can you help me remove the marks for the airstrikes from Google Maps?

#124

Post by trhway »

kmlx wrote: post #112
trhway wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Western media this time is pretty much on point. It doesn't mean that the media has become better. It is just that their standard narrative of bad Russia has this time really matched and even got exceeded by the reality as Russia is actually waging criminally atrocious and completely unprovoked and unjustified war while the Ukrainians are really fighting it tooth and nail. The Ukrainians' current most important victo…

> Western media this time is pretty much on point. how do you know this? > so i mostly settled on the Ukrainian TV these the same guys that said the ghost of kiev is a real thing (it’s not)? or that the soldiers of snake island died (they didn’t)?

this is why you do cross-check, and need to understand the limits on the precision of realtime war info. A lot of info has significant fuzziness and consumption of it is an active process. For the snake island there was information that communication got lost at some point during the battle, and they stated that most probably all the guys died. It wasn't intentional disinformation, and that is the key difference from Russian TV. For the ghost of Kiev - the planes got shot down, while who shot down - was it the same guy or not - is very hard to find out until military gives you that, and i wouldn't hold it against the TV people who built this legend without waiting for full confirmation or denial - again you need to understand there they can get carried away and why.

For contrast, to illustrate what disinformation is - Russian TV continue to claim non-attacking of civilians while you can easily find huge number of videos (which you can easily cross-check/geolocate/etc.) of civilian targets being attacked.

Re: Ask HN: Can you help me remove the marks for the airstrikes from Google Maps?

#125

Post by mmsbdjjkvjj »

merek wrote: post #111

To clarify, are you suggesting these are unusual because "farms" are being marked in urban areas? What is the possibility these are simply addresses of farming-related businesses (e.g. farm equipment suppliers)? (comment cannot be removed, only edited)

Please remove this post

Re: Ask HN: Can you help me remove the marks for the airstrikes from Google Maps?

#126

Post by rightbyte »

squarefoot wrote: post #66
wzyoi wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve put some thoughts in edit on this. What do you think?

You're probably right about undercover saboteurs; they don't want to be caught with military/unusual equipment, so the use of normal phones/tablets and related apps makes sense. In doubt, the harm done by deleting those and similar marks if they're innocuous is nothing compared to the benefits if they're really made by saboteurs. Better they remove them ASAP and keep the attention for other that might surface. I'd al…

> In doubt, the harm done by deleting those and similar marks if they're innocuous is nothing compared to the benefits if they're really made by saboteurs.

You waste energy and time.

There is an insane amount of paranoia in Ukraine (for good reasons ...) and it would not suprise me if the blue-on-blue events are a bigger problem than civilian sabouteurs themselves.

Re: Ask HN: Can you help me remove the marks for the airstrikes from Google Maps?

#127

Post by [deleted] »

social_quotient wrote: post #123

If this is really a thing why would google not probably know about it first and second why would google not just hide everything but roads views for a temporary period. No sat views, no places, nothing but roads. If you want to be fancy maybe roads and gas stations and food. It seems like out of an abundance of caution you would not want your service to be used for this. Same for bing and other maps. Am I missing som…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Can you help me remove the marks for the airstrikes from Google Maps?

#129

Post by curl-up »

wzyoi wrote: post #101
playpause wrote: post #10

I don’t know if this is true. But to everyone dismissing the idea that a military would ever use Google Maps to co-ordinate, you may have missed some news stories about what a shitshow the first few days of the Russian invasion has been. Major breakdown of their digital systems and lots of improvisation.

While I don't have more information and sources apart from an insta story from a smart girl from Dnipro, I don't see the appearance of 10 closed farms in the industrial city beliavable. I requested more info, but she is likely sleeping.

Check my other, more detailed comment - farm's address is rarely in a place where farm is actually located. Farm land is just an asset of a company, which is registered elsewhere. If this is a small, family owned business, it makes sense that they register it in their home (to simplify paperwork), while their farm land is somewhere outside of town.

Checking the points I get on gmaps (following your instructions) and then googling these farms, they seem to be real businesses, and the address matches what gmaps give me. First point I get can be checked on [1].

[1] https://youcontrol-com-ua.translate.goog/catalog/company_det...

Re: Ask HN: Can you help me remove the marks for the airstrikes from Google Maps?

#130

Post by rocqua »

rkangel wrote: post #102
rocqua wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If those comms are cleartext, that also means its possible to start sending disinformation. Start talking about hold-ups at cross-roads that are clear. Tell them about shortcuts that actually lead through marshes. Tell them "the attack we discussed earlier will actually happen 43 minutes earlier". Tell them, "hey we have run out of food here". Tell them, I heard that 10 miles back they are serving hot food, damn I wi…

> If those comms are cleartext, that also means its possible to start sending disinformation. This is a classic confusion of authentication and encryption. We can hear what they're saying (which is useful), but that doesn't mean we can pretend to be them.

The comms have neither authentication nor encryption. So at least on a technology level it is very possible to transmit.

I doubt they have robust enough authentication to determine whether you really are supposed to be speaking. Likely they won't believe you, but they will also start doubting, in general, messages sent over the channel. That means being less sure the actual authentic messages are to be believed.

It's more about disrupting their faith in the comm system, rather than about having them believe your falsehoods.

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