People Are Calling Out FaceApp for ‘Racist’ Filter That Equates Hotness With Whiteness

ByPriscilla Blossom

(Twitter / RealMoseby96)

Have any of you heard of FaceApp yet? I know, there’s like a million apps out there and at least half of them have filters a la Snapchat. With this one, you can alter your appearance to appear older or younger, to appear more masculine or feminine, or to have a variety of different smiles. And it also has a filter called, “Hot” which is supposed to, you guessed it, make you “hotter.” And while all of these filters have some problematic aspects, it’s the app’s racist filter that equates hotness with whiteness that’s got the whole Twittersphere buzzing.

Wait, what?

LogoTV/Giphy
LogoTV/Giphy

As if the weird smiling filters weren’t spooky enough, this “Hot” filter doesn’t do much other than make your skin several shades lighter. Since when does light skin mean hot, though? Who exactly is coming up with this kind of bullshit logic? Seems to me it’s just perpetuating the very real issue that our culture continues to embrace White People are more attractive over People of Color””and yeah, that nonsense really needs to stop. Seriously. Look how much a white person changes with the white, uhm, I mean the “Hot” filter:

https://twitter.com/Kaxbeokay/status/855482310485049345

https://twitter.com/The_MiddleC/status/855228367590875138

Since people starting calling out the filter, it’s been removed from the app. The creator, Yaroslav Goncharov, has apologized, according to The Guardian, saying that the app’s artificial intelligence is at fault. ”It is an unfortunate side-effect of the underlying neural network caused by the training set bias, not intended behavior.”

 

Similar Posts