If you’re always on social media, you may be wondering what happened to the GIF sticker feature on Instagram and Snapchat. Well, here’s the full story behind the missing GIF scandal that has caused most of us to ponder for days. We need those GIFs to decorate our Instastory, bruh!
Both Instagram and Snapchat have temporarily removed Giphy GIF sticker features after a shockingly racist GIF was found in the library by users. It was initially found by a woman who typed ‘crime’ in the app search, which showed not only insensitive imagery but the n-word as well, Metro reported.
The GIF was entitled ‘N***** Crime Death Counter’ and featured an image of a monkey as well as the slogan: ‘The numbers just keep on climbing!’.
Source: Instagram
Giphy has appeared to remove the racist GIF from its library as it is no longer available on Instagram. An Instagram spokesperson said that the company confirms the change has been made but might take some time to propagate to all users, TechCrunch reported.
“This type of content has no place on Instagram. We have stopped our integration with Giphy as they investigate the issue,” Instagram said.
Source: TechCrunch
Snapchat has also released an official statement regarding the much controversial issue, saying, “We have removed GIPHY from our application until we can be assured that this will never happen again.”
A Snapchat spokesperson added that all GIFs in Snapchat are meant to be “rated PG”, meaning they’re mostly suitable for the 13-and-up teens that are technically allowed on Snapchat. This kind of offensive content is prohibited according to the Giphy community guidelines. However, things may slip through since it works like a search engine.
Source: TechCruch
On the other hand, Giphy has provided a statement in regards to the offensive GIF. The company has admitted their mistake and blamed it on a bug for allowing the objectionable GIF to exist.
“A user discovered an offensive GIF sticker in our library, and we immediately removed it per our content guidelines.”
“After investigation of the incident, this sticker was available due to a bug in our content moderation filters specifically affecting GIF stickers. We have fixed the bug and have re-moderated all of the GIF stickers in our library.”
“The GIPHY staff is also further reviewing every GIF sticker by hand and should be finished shortly.”
“We take full responsibility for these recent events and sincerely apologize to anyone who was offended.”
Apparently, this is not the first time Snapchat has been caught up with racist content. Back in 2016, Snapchat received massive backlash for releasing a filter that allegedly promotes a racist Asian stereotype, where users had their faces morphed with augmented reality lens that gave people slanted eyes, depicting the Asian “yellowface” stereotype.
Source: Twitter
It is unsure when Instagram and Snapchat will allow the feature to resume, but hopefully all will be solved soon.
Did you spot any other controversial GIFs on your IG or SC account before?
Also read: This M’sian’s Illustration of Black Panther’s Shuri is So Good, Marvel Posted it on Instagram!
