It seems like a long time ago Instagram and Giphy came under fire due to the appearance of a racist GIF found within the library of available GIFs to put on your stories, although it appears that they have been putting that time to good use as they have just recently reintroduced the feature back into the social media platform promising that their entire GIF library was reviewed four times and that GIFs from now on will have to face “another level of GIPHY moderation before each sticker is approved into the library. This is now a permanent addition to our moderation process.”
Giphy further released a statement on the matter saying: “To anyone who was affected: we’re sorry. We take full responsibility for this recent event and under no circumstances does GIPHY condone or support this kind of content … We have also finished a full investigation into our content moderations systems and processes and have made specific changes to our process to ensure something like this does not happen again.”
As for Instagram they had this to say: “We’ve been in close contact with GIPHY throughout this process and we’re confident that they have put measures in place to ensure that Instagram users have a good experience.”
So as of now, GIFS are appearing as an option to add to your Instagram stories, however, some users say that their favourite GIFs that weren’t offensive have also been thrown out during the purge. Although it’s better safe than sorry when it comes to such sensitive matters, we will just have to wait and see how the GIF library will develop from here.
