Selfie app accused of racism for whitening its users’ skin
FaceApp has sparked some serious controversy after users complained that the app’s “Hot” filter is lightening their skin. The founder has apologized for this issue.
The free app, now trending in the Google Play Store and Apple App Store, is users complained that the “Hot” feature is making their skin appear whiter and their general appearence more “European“. The filter has been renamed “Spark”.
So I downloaded this app and decided to pick the "hot" filter not knowing that it would make me white. It's 2017, c'mon guys smh#FaceApp pic.twitter.com/9U9dv9JuCm
— Shahquelle L. (@RealMoseby96) April 20, 2017
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#faceapp isn't' just bad it's also racist…? filter=bleach my skin and make my nose your opinion of European. No thanks #uninstalled pic.twitter.com/DM6fMgUhr5
— Terrance AB Johnson (@tweeterrance) April 19, 2017
According to the Independent, Yaroslav Goncharov, FaceApp’s founder, has responded to the criticism:
“We are deeply sorry for this unquestionably serious issue. It is an unfortunate side-effect of the underlying neural network caused by the training set bias, not intended behaviour.
“To mitigate the issue, we have renamed the effect to exclude any positive connotation associated with it. We are also working on the complete fix that should arrive soon.”
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