JAKARTA – Snapchat recently released their new filter to commemorate Juneteenth day. Unfortunately, the interactive camera filter has received a lot of protracted protests from netizens who think Snap Inc is a racist company.
Quoting The Independent, Monday 22 June, Juneteenth is a memorial that in 1865 the last black American enslaved in Galveston, Texas, was released two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation.
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Snapchat’s new filter requires the user to smile to break a chain. The filter was denounced as “tone-deaf“Because of his superficiality on racial issues. Due to the many protests, within hours, the company pulled him off the platform and expressed an apology.
Unknown, three former employees said the filter tone Juneteenth illustrates the lack of effort and attention to racial and diversity issues in the company.
“Aaa and this is what happens when you don’t have black people on the product design team. As a Snap alumnus, this is really embarrassing. It doesn’t have to be this hard,” tweeted Ashten Winger, former Snapchat employee who developed content.
In an open letter of apology, Snapchat argued that the filter was still under review, but did not know that it was published on its platform.
“We sincerely apologize to members of the Snapchat community who find this Lens offensive. A diverse group of members of the Snap team was involved in concept development, but the version of Lens that was shown for Snapchatters this morning has not been approved through our review process,” the company said.
This SnapChat #Juneteenth filter is … um … interesting. Smile to break the chains? Okay then. pic.twitter.com/Wyob3kT3ew
– Mark S. Luckie (@marksluckie) June 19, 2020
Looking back, it turns out that this error was not the first time that Snapchat had done it. In 2016, the company released a Bob Marley selfie filter as part of a “4/20 day” celebration that darkens the user’s skin in a caricature of the reggae icon.
The filter immediately received a reaction from the user which indicated that the lens was a digital blackface. That same year Snapchat released an anime-inspired filter, causing the user’s face to look like an Asian racist caricature.
In fact, Snapchat has long faced criticism in the past for screening people’s blemished skin and eyes according to Western racist beauty standards. A filter by Marie Curie released in 2017 as part of an International Women’s Day effort included smoky eyes and a thinning face effect, to the horror of some users.
Snap Chief Executive Evan Spiegel recently told employees he was delaying releasing a report showing the demographic make-up of the company’s workforce.
Spiegel said he was “concerned that releasing data publicly only reinforces the perception that technology is not a place for under-represented (blacks) groups.”
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