Snapchat Apologizes, Takes Down “Insensitive” Juneteenth Filter

Snapchat removed the app’s selfie filter meant to celebrate Juneteenth that asked users to “smile and break the chains” to unlock the augmented-reality animation.

In a statement, Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, offered an apology for the Juneteenth filter. “We deeply apologize to the members of the Snapchat community who found this Lens offensive,” a company spokesperson said in a public statement.

“A diverse group of Snap team members took part in developing the concept. But we had not approved the version of the Lens that went live for Snapchat this morning. We are investigating why this mistake occurred so that we can avoid it in the future.”

After the filter launched Friday morning, users began commenting on the odd way in which Snapchat was using the filter to “celebrate” Juneteenth. “This SnapChat #Juneteenth filter is…um…interesting,” digital strategist Mark Luckie wrote in a tweet. “Smile to break the chains? Okay then.”

Check out the tweet below:

Multimedia designer/developer Ashten Winger, who previously worked at Snap for more than three years; wrote in a Twitter post about the filter that “this is what happens when you don’t have any black people on the product design team.”

Juneteenth, also known as Freedom Day, celebrates the end of slavery in the U.S. This year, many companies have adopted it as an official holiday. June 19 marks the date in 1865, two years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. This was when a Union Army general informed Black slaves in Galveston, Texas; that the Civil War was over and they were free.

Snap’s epic fail with the Juneteenth filter comes after a report last week by Business Insider that CEO Evan Spiegel said in all-hands meeting; that Snap would not publicly release diversity statistics about its employees as many other Silicon Valley companies do.

Spiegel said he was concerned that doing so “would reinforce the idea that minority groups are underrepresented in the tech industry,” according to the BI report. Snapchat previously had said it was committed to releasing diversity metrics “with more context and plans for meaningful action.”

It’s not the first time Snapchat has come under fire for insensitive filters. On April 20, 2016, it released a Bob Marley-inspired filter. This darkened the user’s skin colour and added dreadlocks, which users called “digital blackface.”

Later that year, Snapchat released another filter; which pulled down users’ eyes into slanted lines, enlarged their cheeks, and made their front teeth more prominent if smiling. Many perceived this to be echoing racist Asian caricatures.