OpenStreetMap
Politically motivated vandalism on OpenStreetMap
Posted by tukangsampat on 2 September 2025 in English.In 2025 alone I found vandalism incidents specifically targeting map of Indonesian parliament compound twice, in March and now in late August. Thankfully these are all restored.
What made me sad that some Indonesians don’t understand the OpenStreetMap at all, what they only know in their head is political activism. They do by erasing - or editing - the place of institution they despise. Not really sure if these incidents are unique to maps in Indonesia or there’s international example of politically motivated vandalism of OSM maps?
Discussion
Comment from Venerdì (Michi) on 2 September 2025 at 12:07
Hi, as now I’ve never seen something like this in Italy, I don’t know the political situation in your country, in any case I believe that political activism also passes through annoying acts, and Openstreet Map as an open system is subject (fortunately or unfortunately, it depends on the points of view) to this too.
Comment from tukangsampat on 3 September 2025 at 04:01
Hi Michi, thanks for commenting and I agree with you. In case anyone (including OSMF DWG team) missed it, both vandalisms take place coincidentally during major protest in our country, mostly on domestic issues. I never see such vandalism happened before 2025 even during any protests in Indonesia, so this might be interesting phenomenon.
I can’t comment on situation in Italy, but I appreciate if no users (of any country) do some annoying action like two Indonesian netizens did to open system like OpenStreetMap when a major political action (e.g. protests) take place.
I hope this vandalism must be the last, there are already appropriate place for speak about politics online.
Comment from fantomas on 3 September 2025 at 05:57
For example https://shtosm.ru/all/openstreetmap-atakuyut/
Comment from ianlopez1115 on 3 September 2025 at 14:46
Not that unique, there was one instance almost a decade ago when some mappers vandalized a military-managed cemetery (check edit history) as some people were (and probably still are) not happy that a former president or dictator (depending on one’s viewpoint) was allowed to be buried in that location by my country’s supreme court (see en-wiki article about it).
Aside: There are effective ways in manifesting one’s anger or disgust over certain current events, vandalism in OpenStreetMap isn’t one of them and such acts could even backfire.
Comment from SomeoneElse on 4 September 2025 at 12:53
Please email [email protected] with full details of who did what, when, and what the political context was. Without that we won’t even know about it.
– Andy (from the DWG)
Comment from tukangsampat on 5 September 2025 at 07:44
My apologies for late replies, because of real life work.
ianlopez1115 and fantomas, thanks for providing international example, that invalidates my thought that politically linked vandalism are only something happening in Indonesia.
@ SomeoneElse: Hi, thanks for suggestion, I try to provide the information as quickly as possible.
Comment from marazzer on 6 September 2025 at 09:12
Hey. Have you been using reverters for this? They can help a LOT with recovering data, try them out. Here is one made by Zaczero (NorthCrab): click me
Comment from marazzer on 6 September 2025 at 09:12
Oops, link doesn’t work. “revert.monicz.dev” is the website.
Comment from tukangsampat on 6 September 2025 at 12:48
vp21, thanks for suggestion, I didn’t know that tool exist. I could use it in case of future vandalism incident.
Comment from SomeoneElse on 6 September 2025 at 12:58
You need to be a little bit careful with that revert tool - it doesn’t work where there are multiple problem changesets (it actually makes things worse) and if the problem is still ongoing it can also make things worse (as it warns when you run it) due to the way that it queries the data. The Josm reverter is a good option that is interactive; it’ll help you untangle vandal and later good-faith changes. If you want to revert “everything not changed by a later mapper” then the perl revert scripts are a good option, but they require a bit of familiarity with the OSM API and scripts in general. If it looks too complicated just report it to the DWG :)