Snapchat ‘yellowface’ filter removed after being accused of racism

The filter follows a problem with the ‘Weed Day’ filter that used a picture of Bob Marley and was accused of being a technological version of blackface

A Twitter user demands answers from Snapchat about the filter, which has been widely condemned as racist

Snapchat has removed a filter that was said to be racist against East Asian people and said that it will never use it again.

The filter distorted people’s facial features so that they’re eyelashes looked wider and as if they were drawn as a cartoon. Snapchat has said that the filter was meant to be an homage to anime drawings – but others pointed out that it looked an awful lot like caricatures of East Asian people.

The filter was quickly removed from Snapchat. The company has said that she won’t be coming back into use.

It said that the lenses were intended to be “playful” and were never meant to offend anyone.

But deleting the filter wasn’t enough to satisfy some users, who said that they were going to stop using the app because of the filter. Some described Snapchat as having acted “like Trump” – “clearly racist and with the maturity of a third grader”.

The controversy follows an almost identical criticism of a “Weed Day” filter earlier this year, that turned people into a likeness of Bob Marley. That was given the go-ahead by Mr Marley’s estate but was criticised by many of its users, who said that it was a technological form of blackface.

And the app has come under fire for more subtle forms of racism too. For instance, many of the filters that it makes to “beautify” people’s faces also tend to lighten them or make them more white, critics have pointed out.