The viral app now allows users to change their looks with "black", "white", "Indian", and "Asian" filters, prompting a wide variety of users and others to respond with outrage.
Specifically, the update allows users to manipulate their selfies with filters created to mimic Asian, black, white, and Indian features.
"Im glad faceapp, that fun app we all used for 24 hours, just invented black face as a cool retro comeback attempt", Tweeted one user. Well, somehow they've managed to one-up themselves and are being called out again, this time for creating filters that are intentionally meant to change a person's race when in use. Considering that in-app filters have long struggled to contend with "digital blackface", these new filters felt to many like a unusual escalation of the racial insensitivity that's already plaguing face swapping and transforming apps.
Despite Goncharov's insistence, some FaceApp users are none too pleased with the new filters, voicing their disagreement and skepticism on Twitter.
People online have already started to criticize the app for what is essentially a blatant case of digital blackface.
Georges St-Pierre Signs on Dotted Line for UFC 217, Michael Bisping
St-Pierre (25-2-0) subsequently stepped away from the sport, saying his life had become "completely insane" and a "freaking zoo". Bisping has defended his title once since knocking out Luke Rockhold , scoring a victory vs.
This is the original selfie I submitted to the app.
- Good Tweetman (@Goodtweet_man) August 9, 2017HOLY SHIT did Faceapp (the app with a "hot" filter which lightens your skin) seriously just add a blackface mode??
"The ethnicity change filters have been created to be equal in all aspects", Yaroslav Goncharov, chief executive of FaceApp, told Mic. "They don't have any positive or negative connotations associated with them", a representative from FaceApp told Buzzfeed in a statement.
The Russian company has not stated whether the lenses would eventually be removed. "They are even represented by the same icon", Goncharov wrote. In 2016, Snapchat released a Bob Marley selfie mask filter to mark the 4/20 April holiday. And later that year, Snapchat introduced (and pulled) an "anime"-inspired filter that had quite a few similarities to racist caricature drawings of Asians".
Comments