Snapchat faced a lot of criticism when people called it out on being a racist and male dominated application.
Snapchat faced a lot of criticism last year when it released its Juneteenth filter which consisted of a smile to break the chain mechanism which was considered insensitive and offensive by the public. On this the team apologized and said that though there were also black members of the team involved in creating this filter they could not consider the context of it being used by white people. The filter was removed obviously.
However other filters like Bob Marley filter and an anime-inspired filter that were both released in 2016 have also been heavily criticized.
The company also had a heavily white and male dominated team and other ethnic groups and women were in a very minor amount which was also called out by the public and Snapchat since then being called out on its gender and racial inequality is trying to improve and work better.
The Snap team has currently made slow progress in terms of overall gender and racial equality considering that it still has a 47 percent of its employees being white and 65 percent male. However, significant progress was observed in the when the team updated the women ratio from 37.5 to 50 percent in the board of directors.
Apart from this other minor changes but positive changes were noticed like a tiny rise in women’s representation across the company from 32.9 to 33.1 percent while the underrepresented racial groups among leadership also observed an increase from 3.1 to 13.6 percent.
However, in between these positive growth a few minor decrease in groups were also seen like Hispanic / Latinx representation decreased from 6.9 to 6.8 percent, and Asian representation in leadership decreased from 16.5 to 14.3 percent.
While all these were minor changes that were made by the company within the span of one year. The company has bigger plans for the future which they aim to meet by the end of 2025 hopefully. The changes the company are hoping to bring forward are to:
Increase underrepresented racial and ethnic groups across the company from 18.7 to 20 percent. Increase women in tech roles from 16.5 to 25 percent, and increase women and racial and ethnic groups in leadership an additional 30 percent each, from 13.7 and 17.4 percent.
Another huge and solid change that the company is planning on bringing is develop a more inclusive Snapchat camera. Considering how the previous photography and selfies on Snap were mere representation of racial history the team is now working with known experts from outside their own team to develop technology that counteracts bias including adjusting the front flash for the selfie camera and adding ways to correct brightness and exposure after a photo is taken.
It is great though that the company understands that some of its features and acts were mere representation of inequality and injustice and in such moving and advanced times how important it is to treat everyone equally and therefore the company is taking the required steps to change their ways.
Read next: Rising up to 280 million users, Snapchat has left Twitter behind and reports a potential take-up of Tiktok’s clone, Spotlight
Snapchat faced a lot of criticism last year when it released its Juneteenth filter which consisted of a smile to break the chain mechanism which was considered insensitive and offensive by the public. On this the team apologized and said that though there were also black members of the team involved in creating this filter they could not consider the context of it being used by white people. The filter was removed obviously.
However other filters like Bob Marley filter and an anime-inspired filter that were both released in 2016 have also been heavily criticized.
The company also had a heavily white and male dominated team and other ethnic groups and women were in a very minor amount which was also called out by the public and Snapchat since then being called out on its gender and racial inequality is trying to improve and work better.
The Snap team has currently made slow progress in terms of overall gender and racial equality considering that it still has a 47 percent of its employees being white and 65 percent male. However, significant progress was observed in the when the team updated the women ratio from 37.5 to 50 percent in the board of directors.
Apart from this other minor changes but positive changes were noticed like a tiny rise in women’s representation across the company from 32.9 to 33.1 percent while the underrepresented racial groups among leadership also observed an increase from 3.1 to 13.6 percent.
However, in between these positive growth a few minor decrease in groups were also seen like Hispanic / Latinx representation decreased from 6.9 to 6.8 percent, and Asian representation in leadership decreased from 16.5 to 14.3 percent.
While all these were minor changes that were made by the company within the span of one year. The company has bigger plans for the future which they aim to meet by the end of 2025 hopefully. The changes the company are hoping to bring forward are to:
Increase underrepresented racial and ethnic groups across the company from 18.7 to 20 percent. Increase women in tech roles from 16.5 to 25 percent, and increase women and racial and ethnic groups in leadership an additional 30 percent each, from 13.7 and 17.4 percent.
Another huge and solid change that the company is planning on bringing is develop a more inclusive Snapchat camera. Considering how the previous photography and selfies on Snap were mere representation of racial history the team is now working with known experts from outside their own team to develop technology that counteracts bias including adjusting the front flash for the selfie camera and adding ways to correct brightness and exposure after a photo is taken.
It is great though that the company understands that some of its features and acts were mere representation of inequality and injustice and in such moving and advanced times how important it is to treat everyone equally and therefore the company is taking the required steps to change their ways.
Read next: Rising up to 280 million users, Snapchat has left Twitter behind and reports a potential take-up of Tiktok’s clone, Spotlight
