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White House phone number shows up as ‘Epstein Island’ on some devices after Google Maps edit
(www.straitstimes.com)
this post was submitted on 30 Mar 2026
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This is the WaPo article that The Straits Times regurgitates and adds very little to.
Now I can shamelessly use this comment's air of legitimacy as a foothold to encourage people to try using and contributing to OpenStreetMap. In terms of a business directory, it's often worse because so much business information on Google Maps is maintained by business owners themselves (you can make a difference in improving it on OSM, and it's very easy once you have the hang of it).
But there are use cases Google Maps simply sucks at and gives OpenStreetMap the advantage in places where OSM's data is even modestly complete.
You can use StreetComplete to contribute information to OpenStreetMap!
https://f-droid.org/packages/de.westnordost.streetcomplete/
Totally! I'll add as a caveat that StreetComplete intentionally has major limitations compared to other editors like iD (web), Vespucci (Android), Go Map!! (iOS), etc. (JOSM (desktop) would be in there with even fewer limitations except that I'd never recommend it to a beginner.) StreetComplete lets you add data to incomplete objects* and respond to notes, but you're not going to be going around adding stuff that isn't already there. It's good, as a specific example, for beginners who are out on a walk and might notice the convenience store they go to doesn't have any hours listed. Noting this to preempt any confusion that I've seen some people experience when StreetComplete doesn't let them do things they were expecting to be able to.
* Objects in OpenStreetMap's data are points, lines (1D), and areas (2D simple polygons). Under the hood, these are then given tags (key–value pairs the community roughly agree mean something) which denote what they are, sometimes relate them to other objects, etc. (Leaving this note here for the stray pedant who's going to point out that a blank area is just a closed-loop line/series of lines with an area tag. Ignore this if that isn't you.) Most editors will expose this as something more abstract and digestible, like letting you select an area, search for "fast food restaurant", and mark it as such, doing the tagging under the hood and showing you options you can change about a fast food restaurant (like whether it has a drive thru).
WaPo is paywalled though.