Instagram And Snapchat Remove Giphy Feature Over Racist GIF [Update]

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Instagram was very quick to remove GIFs from Stories after it discovered racist image slip through Giphy. Well, after taking precautions and added measures, Instagram seems satisfied, as it has added back the ability to insert GIFs to your Instagram Stories.

Instagram spokesperson told TechCrunch;

We’ve been in close contact with Giphy throughout this process and we’re confident that they have put measures in place to ensure that Instagram users have a good experience.

 

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If you are unable to add GIFs to your Stories on Instagram or Snapchat, it because the Giphy feature has been temporarily removed from both platforms after users saw an extremely racist GIF as an option to add to their images.

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Instagram And Snapchat Remove Giphy Feature

A tweet by Lyauna Augmon shows the GIF being used within Instagram. Giphy appears to have removed the GIF as it’s no longer available on Instagram. The GIF reads “N—– Crime Death Counter – Keep Cranking Bonzo, the Numbers Just Keep on Climbing!”. It is no longer available on Instagram or Snapchat. The GIF would appear under a search for the word ‘crime’ on the Giphy platform [which is now removed].

In a statement to TechCrunch, Snapchat said it removed the racist GIF and disable Giphy as soon as they were made aware and are waiting for a response from the Giphy team to look into the issue and the company needs to make sure this does not happen again. And Instagram’s spokesperson said “This type of content has no place on Instagram. We have stopped our integration with Giphy as they investigate the issue.”

ALSO READ: How To Delete Or Deactivate Your Snapchat Account?

It is worth noting that Giphy powers GIFs on other Facebook-owned platforms namely WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger as well. This incident questions Facebook’s recently introduced Messenger for Kids app, which also has Giphy integration that is only supposed to show G-rated imagery.

Giphy’s statement;

“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.

We are 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.”

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