In Thailand, Google takes down two maps identifying royal critics

A royalist activist and volunteers created the maps with names and addresses of royal critics to report them to the police.

Google took down two Google Maps documents on Monday that had listed the names and addresses of hundreds of Thai activists who were accused by royalists of opposing the monarchy, the technology company said. Thai royalist activist Songklod “Pukem” Chuenchoopol told Reuters he and a team of 80 volunteers had created the maps and planned to report everyone named on them to police on accusations of insulting the monarchy. A spokesperson for Alphabet’s Google said by email “the issue is now fixed”, and noted, “We have clear policies about what’s acceptable for user generated My Maps content. We remove user generated maps that violate our policies.”