Snap has temporarily disabled Snapchat’s “heatmap” feature in Ukraine, which means the app will no longer indicate how many snaps are being taken in specific places. The firm claims that the shift is merely a “safety measure,” and that a curated public feed of photographs provided by Ukrainians will remain.
Normally, a color code is displayed on the Snap Map to indicate how many users are submitting public photographs in a given location. In practice, this means you can obtain a good indication of where the majority of Snapchat users are. While this publicly available data isn’t normally used, it’s definitely for the best that the capability is disabled in a conflict scenario where Russia could want to follow evacuations or citizen movements.
Other firms have taken similar steps to make it more difficult to trace Ukrainians’ activities — Google and Apple both switched off live traffic information in Ukraine. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Snap has taken a few further steps. According to a business announcement, it has stopped broadcasting ads in Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine, and will no longer sell ad space to Russian entities.
