Giphy supports animated GIFs from YouTube videos or images with captions and stickers, but the self acclaimed fast and easy GIF maker is rather taunted for its extremely racist slur. Both Snapchat and Instagram have temporarily removed the Giphy GIF sticker features from their platforms, citing users complaints of racist undertones, and have gone ahead to disable the Giphy GIF support until they can be assured it won’t repeat itself.
The disturbing GIF includes text containing a racial slur, which sample reads "N—– Crime Death Counter – Keep Cranking Bonzo, the Numbers Just Keep on Climbing!"
The incident is quite embarrassing for social media generally and perhaps do raise a flag on Facebook’s Messenger Kids app, which also has Giphy integration that is supposed to show G-rated contents.
All Giphy GIFs in Snapchat are meant to be “rated PG,” meaning they’re mostly suitable for the 13-and-up teens that are formally allowed on Snapchat.
The racial slur could deter Snapchat from working more with outside developers, which it’s only recently allowed to contribute content through its Lens Studio and the Giphy integration. Albeit, it only launched on February 20th for users to jazz up their photos and videos with moving images curated by the Giphy team.
Though Giphy seems to have removed the offending GIF, as the community guidelines prohibit this kind of objectionable content in the first place, but since it indexes the top GIFs on the web, bad stuff can still pass undetected.
Giphy, however have taken full responsibility for the embarrassing mishap and sincerely apologized to anyone who may have been offended.
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