Snapchat Apologizes For Juneteenth Filter Telling Users To “Smile & Break the Chains”

Snapchat has issued an apology after finding itself in hot water over its controversial Juneteenth filter on Friday. The filter allows users to “smile and break the chains.” However, it was pulled from the social site around 11 AM Friday morning. Sources close to the matter revealed that while black Snap employees were involved in the initial creation of the filter, they did not preview the final version, which included the breaking chains feature that was activated when the user smiled.

“We deeply apologize to the members of the Snapchat community who found this Lens offensive,” a Snapchat spokesperson said in an email to The Verge. “A diverse group of Snap team members were involved in developing the concept, but a version of the Lens that went live for Snapchatters this morning had not been approved through our review process. We are investigating why this mistake occurred so that we can avoid it in the future.”

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Lens development, which is led by the team from Looksery, is largely based in Ukraine and may not be familiar with the history behind slavery and Juneteenth.

Mark S. Luckie, a digital strategist out of Atlanta, called the filter “interesting” as he demonstrated how it worked in a Twitter video. In the demonstration, the filter shows an approximation of the Pan-African flag and prompts the user to smile, which is a common trigger used for animated Snapchat filters. Once Luckie smiled, chains appeared and then broke behind him.

Juneteenth is the widely celebrated anniversary of the day in 1865 when a group of slaves in Texas learned that slavery in America had ended, more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed into law by Abraham Lincoln.