The corporations are at it again. On June 19th, Snapchat introduced a very misguided Juneteenth filter, and removed it after receiving criticism from Black users over social media. The filter featured a pan-African flag background, was captioned with the words “JUNETEENTH†and “FREEDOM DAY,†and prompted users to “smile.†When the user smiled, chains materialized and broke. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist (or an app engineer) to realize that telling users to smile into the facial recognition lens to break chains symbolizing centuries of slavery and racist brutality is a tone deaf way to commemorate the holiday. Digital strategist Mark S. Luckie tweeted a video of himself using the filter and showing his dumbfounded reaction, and many others followed suit in the replies.
As former Snap employee and multimedia designer/developer Ashten Winger tweeted, “this is what happens when you don’t have any black people on the product design team.†In 2017, Snapchat faced backlash for its Bob Marley 4/20 filter, which was called “digital blackface.â€
Snapchat took down the filter later that morning and issued an apology, stating to CNBC, “A diverse group of Snap team members were involved in developing the concept, but a version of the Lens that went live for Snapchatters this morning had not been approved through our review process.â€