By Sophie Spiegelberger
Publication Date: 2026-02-24 17:55:00
Google Maps is also different from a paper map; if you annotate the latter, nobody else sees your notes. Google Maps allows us to annotate collectively and to create a new kind of common knowledge about the world. With a few exceptions, we are all using the same Google Maps, regardless of our location. Generally, every review is visible to all.
Most people use reviews to seek out pleasures and avoid annoyances. Is the coffee better at this café or that one? Does the food taste as good as it looks in the pictures? Will this dry cleaner ruin my clothes? This is mostly still the case in Russia, even as certain locales attract digital pleas of desperation. In a review for Dodo’s Pizza, a restaurant just down the road from Military Hospital 1602, a user named Aleksandr has informed the world that the food is “always perfectly prepared,” and that “everything is clean, and the staff is polite.”
In recent years, the Russian government has tightened its control over civilians’…
