Google took down two Google Maps documents on Monday that had indexed the names and addresses of hundreds of Thai activists who were accused through royalists of opposing the monarchy, the technology organization said.
Thai royalist activist Songklod "Pukem" Chuenchoopol informed Reuters he and a crew of eighty volunteers had created the maps and planned to report everybody named on them to police on accusations of insulting the monarchy.
A spokesperson for Alphabet's Google said through e-mail "the difficulty is now constant", and cited: "we've got clean policies about what is proper for person generated My Maps content. We remove consumer generated maps that violate our regulations."
A model of one of the maps visible by Reuters included the names and addresses of nearly 500 humans, a lot of them students, collectively with their pics in university or high college uniforms. It had obtained over 350,000 perspectives.
The faces of those named were protected with the aid of black squares with the variety 112, in reference to the thing beneath the us of a's criminal code which makes insulting or defaming the monarchy punishable by means of up to 15 years in jail.
Neither map may be accessed whilst Reuters attempted to open them overdue on Monday.
Songklod stated that he and the group of volunteers sought to spotlight those they accused of breaking that law.
"whilst every of us sees something offensive published on social media, we placed it on the map," he said. Describing it as a "psychological" conflict operation, Songklod stated the goal changed into to dissuade human beings from on line grievance of the monarchy.
young people-led protests that commenced closing yr introduced unheard of grievance of the monarchy and requires its reform both on the streets and on line.
The government did now not right now reply to touch upon the elimination of the Google Maps or the content they contained.
Songklod, 54, a retired navy captain and prominent right-wing activist, stated he considered the operation concentrated on combatants of the monarchy a "huge achievement" in spite of the elimination of the maps.
The royalist activist said the content material in them had come from public research.
Human rights organizations and critics of the establishment said the maps protected the personal records and addresses of loads of humans and could put them at risk of violence.
"I started out to get panicked messages from younger people in Thailand who had been doxxed in a royalist report on Google Maps accusing them of being anti-monarchy," stated Andrew MacGregor Marshall, a Scotland-based totally critic of the monarchy and one of the earliest to highlight the lifestyles of the maps.
"it's clean that young Thai individuals who simply want democracy are facing worsening dangers."
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