The Snap Map feature, which shows where Snaps were taken, can be quite useful for those who want to know what are the most important places to visit in an area when you are sightseeing, but not so much for people trying to flee a war.
Therefore, as a security measure, Snap has temporarily disabled the “heat map” feature for public postings Ukraine. Normally, the Snap map highlights the places where tons of Snaps have been taken with a bright red circle and the places where a few posts have been made with a blue circle. If you look at the feature in the app or on the web, you will see that there are no longer flags placed over Ukraine.
Other tech companies have also disabled features that can show the movements of Ukrainians leaving the country, which is currently under attack by Russia.
Google turned off live traffic data in Ukraine, including the live traffic layer for Maps, to protect the safety of the inhabitants. As well disabled user-submitted Maps locations after it was claimed they were being used by the Russian military to coordinate airstrikes.
As a safety precaution we have temporarily disabled the Snap Map’s “heatmap” of public Snaps in Ukraine. We will continue to offer curated Stories comprised of Snaps submitted in Ukraine.
— Snapchat Support (@snapchatsupport) March 5, 2022
When it announced the end of product sales in Russia, Apple said it had also disabled live traffic data in Ukraine to prevent the app from being used to attack residents of that country.