Google Maps users noticed something suspicious recently. Swastikas symbols appeared all over the world, in places such as Las Vegas, London, Edinburgh or Dublin. The users who noticed that immediately took it to Twitter to share that they spotted. Andy Ingram is one of the users who noticed the symbol, and he tweeted to ask Google: “Why are your maps showing London hotels with swastikas on the pins?”. He also explained how he came to notice the symbol:
I was looking at the area on Google maps because I’m in London for the weekend. Saw the icons on the hotels and wondered why they were there.
I closed the app for a short time and when I opened it again they were back to the usual hotel icon.
At the time I just presumed it was some hackers having fun, because you hear of things like that happening.
Nicole is another user that spotted the swastika:
Noticed this very strange thing on Google maps today.
Your symbol appears as a swastika. However, it’s only when you zoom in that it changes to a hotel symbol. Seems extremely weird.
Buddhist symbol
One user soon pointed out that swastikas look different:
Nazi swastikas point clockwise and usually appear diagonally. This is a Manji.
That swastika points counter-clockwise, has appeared on temples in southern and eastern Asia for millennia, and is often used there as a map icon to mark temples.
It appears that the user was correct, and the symbol that showed up was indeed a religious one. Nonetheless, the symbol still appeared in the wrong locations, such as hotels. A Google spokesperson explained that they know about this issue: “We’re aware that these religious symbols are incorrectly displaying for certain hotels, and are working on a fix to restore the correct hotel icon to these places.”
Nora Reynolds is a major in biology and a minor in Biological Basis of Behavior, writing about science in general. She also likes to try new gadgets and sports about the AI new era.