Instagram, Snapchat bring Giphy back after racist GIF

Back in March, Giphy faced backlash because of its racist GIF on social media sites Instagram and Snapchat. Just recently, the sites have accepted Giphy back to the platforms after moderations in its GIFs.

Previous days, a racist GIF from Giphy was seen appearing on Snapchat and Instagram when the word ‘crime’ was typed in, which led to people across the world criticizing Giphy. Ultimately, both the social media sites took Giphy off from their platforms. However, now they have incorporated it back again since they have upgraded their moderation. Instagram reinstated Giphy last week, whereas Snapchat did it just few days ago, reported The Verge.

After much backlash, Instagram and Snapchat remove racist GIF

The racist GIF was introduced by Giphy to the ‘Stories’ feature of both the sites. When the user would type in the word ‘crime’, the GIF appeared that referred to a ‘death counter’ while also using a racial slur. As soon as the companies discovered it, they immediately apologized and took it down.

Giphy too apologized and said that it has now combed through its database numerous times for detecting any other such troublesome GIFs. Protective measure are also now placed in order to avoid any future racist GIFs from appearing in the library. Giphy informed Gizmodo that it quickly ‘fixed the bug and have re-moderated all of the GIF stickers in our library’ along with reviewing stickers manually.

As per Giphy’s terms of service, users are now even prohibited from posting any kind of ‘abusive, obscene, offensive, or vulgar’ content. They claimed that the racist GIF was because of the bug in the moderation filters, however, the company has now fixed the bug.