Snap Inc. trying to show black users they care about by releasing interactive camera filters to commemorate Juneteenth. But social media filters and protests that occur only remind the world of the company’s history of racist or insensitive mistakes and lack of internal diversity.
Juneteenth marked the anniversary of that day in 1865 when the last black American enslaved in Galveston, Texas, was released 2½ years after the Emancipation Proclamation. Filter, ask user to “SMILE” to break the digital chain, debuts Friday morning on Snapchat. Within a few hours, the company had withdrawn it and apologized.
Noting that the company had issued the same offensive filter in the past, three former employees said the Juneteenth filter tone illustrates the lack of effort and attention to the issue of race and diversity.
“Aaa and this is what happens when you don’t have black people on the product design team. As a Snap alumni, this is very embarrassing. It doesn’t have to be this difficult, ” tweeted Ashten Winger, who is black and previously worked at Snapchat, developed original content.
In his apology, Snapchat said it was investigating the error.
“We are very sorry to members of the Snapchat community who consider Lens to be offensive,” the company said. “A diverse group of Snap team members were involved in concept development, but the Lens version that aired for Snapchatters this morning has not yet been approved through our review process.”
This is not the first step Snap with a filter.
In 2016, the company released a Bob Marley selfie filter as part of the “4/20 days” celebration that darkens the user’s skin in a reggae icon caricature, triggering a strong reaction from users who show that the lens is digital blackface. In the same year Snapchat released a anime-inspired filters which causes people’s faces to look like Asian racist caricatures.
Company has widely facing criticism in the past to filter the skin and eyes of people who brighten up according to racist Western beauty standards. A filter from Marie Curie released in 2017 as part of an International Women’s Day effort including smoky eyes and facial thinning effects, which horrifies some users.
“For us today where everyone is trying to become more racially aware and more politically aware, to be honest it is very surprising to me that they have not put in place the right system to prevent this from happening again,” said Diana Baik, who is a producer at Snapchat before leaving the company in 2018.
Good said that she left the company because she was demoralized by the culture there as a woman of color. He said Snapchat might have linked the misstep to internal miscommunication, but there were no more valid reasons for this type of incident.
Chief executive Snap Evan Spiegel recently told employees that he was delaying the release of a report showing the demographic composition of the company’s workforce. Based on People in business, Spiegel said he was “concerned that releasing data publicly only reinforces the perception that technology is not a place for under-represented groups.”
“Years ago I asked @evanspiegel to face him with all his hands if he had taken care of everything to make sure that @Snapchat would NEVER make this mistake again. He gave me his words that it would never happen again. The test results have determined THAT IS LYING, “a former Snapchat Black employee tweeted Friday morning.
The same employee developed in the notes posted to their Snapchat story.
“We know when you don’t care. We know when we have meditations,” he wrote. “It’s not polite to every black employee either past or present who helped build this place.”
