Snapchat removed their Juneteenth filter after users criticized it and called it “tone-deaf”.
What We Know:
- Juneteenth is an annual celebration for the ending of slavery in the U.S. The holiday commemorates June 19, 1865, when the federal troops arrived in Texas to ensure that all enslaved people were freed.
- The Snapchat filter consisted of the Pan-African flag as the background. As you enter your face to take a selfie, it directs you to smile as chains appear and break in half.
- Snapchat creates a filter for every holiday, but the Juneteenth filter didn’t sit well with many users. Digital Strategist Mark S. Luckie tweeted a video of him trying out the filter, resulting in it going viral. His caption stated, “Smile to break the chains? Okay then.”
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
- Snapchat apologized for being insensitive and emailed a statement to The Post:
“We want to be careful not to normalize the numbers across the tech industry, because I think in some cases with everybody publishing their numbers, it can feel as an acceptance of the way things are,” Murphy said. “Those diversity numbers are published internally, and we use them as a marker to make progress for ourselves, and our team is in fact working on a way to publish those numbers and represent the progress we at least hope to be making for our company.”
Snapchat also sent out a snap picture to all of its users of a drawing to celebrate Juneteenth and the meaning behind the day to educate its users.
