Instagram, Snapchat remove Giphy feature due to a racist GIF
What's the story
Instagram and Snapchat have temporarily disabled the Giphy sticker features from their respective apps after users reported of an extremely racist GIF option that could be added to the stories or images.
First reports came from a user on Snapchat but later the same racial GIF was spotted on Facebook-owned Instagram as well.
Here's more on this development.
Quote
Both Snapchat and Instagram have temporarily disabled Giphy
"We have removed GIPHY from our application until we can be assured that this will never happen again," read Snapchat's official statement. Instagram said, "This type of content has no place on Instagram. We have stopped our integration with Giphy as they investigate the issue."
Details
About the racial slur GIF and Giphy
The GIF included a racial slur that read- "N**** Crime Death Counter Keep Cranking Bonzo, the Numbers Just Keep on Climbing!". Notably, Giphy has now removed the offensive GIF.
As per Giphy community guidelines, this kind of objectionable content is prohibited but given Giphy works like a search engine to index the top GIFs on the web, this incident could be a slip-up.
Bigger concerns
Need for stricter regulations?
For Instagram's parent company Facebook, this is an embarrassing incident as it casts doubt on its recently launched Messenger Kids, which also has Giphy integration though restricted to G-rated imagery.
For Snapchat, this isn't its first run-in with racist content. Back in 2016, Snapchat drew flak for creating an augmented reality lens that mimicked Asian "yellowface" stereotype with slanted eyes.