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FaceApp debuted new filters yesterday that allowed users to turn portraits into different races, and it caused immediate outrage: the company was forced to remove their “ethnicity filters” in mere hours, as the accusations of racism and blackface were too much for the developers to bear.
The company initially released a statement arguing that the “ethnicity change filters” were “designed to be equal in all aspects”. “They don’t have any positive or negative connotations associated with them,” the company’s chief executive Yaroslav Goncharov said. “They are even represented by the same icon. In addition to that, the list of those filters is shuffled for every photo, so each user sees them in a different order.” But by 5pm on the same day, FaceApp apparently agreed with the criticism, pulling the new filters from its app. They were unavailable to users a few hours later.
The company initially released a statement arguing that the “ethnicity change filters” were “designed to be equal in all aspects”. “They don’t have any positive or negative connotations associated with them,” the company’s chief executive Yaroslav Goncharov said. “They are even represented by the same icon. In addition to that, the list of those filters is shuffled for every photo, so each user sees them in a different order.” But by 5pm on the same day, FaceApp apparently agreed with the criticism, pulling the new filters from its app. They were unavailable to users a few hours later.