Snap

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Snap Inc. logo

Snap Inc. is an American camera and social media company, founded on September 16, 2011, by Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Reggie Brown based in Santa Monica, California. The company developed and maintains a number of technological products and services, namely Snapchat, Spectacles, and Bitmoji. The company was originally named Snapchat Inc. upon its inception, but it was rebranded on September 24, 2016, as Snap Inc. in order to include the Spectacles product under a single company.[1]

The company develops and maintains the image messaging and multimedia mobile app Snapchat, as well as develops and manufactures the wearable camera called Spectacles, a pair of smartglasses that connect to the user's Snapchat account and records videos in a circular video format adjustable in any orientation.[2]

Racism accusation

Five former employees who worked on the content team from 2014 and 2018 said that editorial practices were racially biased and they had to advocate for Black representation. The former employees shared their experiences as people of color at the company on Twitter, including discriminatory behavior from leadership team members.

An employee was reportedly met with resistance from their manager for wanting to use a photo of a Black dance duo as the lead image for a story about dancing. That manager said that they wanted to use a “friendlier face”. Historically Black people have been stereotyped as more violent and aggressive than people of other races. That same manager, while Snapchat was creating content for New York’s Fashion Week in 2017, said that there were “too many Black people in [the] story” and that Snapchat’s audience would feel like “we didn’t make this for them", reports claimed.[3]

In July 2020, Snap hired a law firm and launched an internal investigation into allegations of racism and sexism.

Days after that CEO and founder Evan Spiegel addressed concerns of racism at an all-hands meeting in June 2020 and said he was concerned with releasing diversity reports because they “effectively normalize the current makeup of the tech industry, of which Snapchat's in line,” but said the team would work on a report that would include Snap’s diversity and inclusion strategy.

In July 29, 2020, Snap Inc. published its first annual diversity report on which discloses how white, male employees make up the majority of the company workforce.

In 2019, Snap’s team was 4.1% Black and 6.8% Latinx and 32.9% of staff identifed as female; at the director-level and above, the leadership team was 2.6% Black, 2.6% Latinx, 16.5% Asian, 7% multiracial, 70.4% white and 24.3% identified as female.[4]

This isn’t the first time Snap has been criticized — in 2016, people said that some of Snap’s filters were racially insensitive, including one which “whitewashed” skin, one gave users slanted eyes and another turned people into Bob Marley, effectively creating blackface — and this year the company apologized for a Juneteenth filter that prompted users to “smile and break the chains” of slavery.[4]

References

  1. Stefansky, Emma. Snapchat Has Rebranded to Snap Inc., Is Now Selling Sunglasses". September 24, 2016. vanityfair.com. Retrieved Feb 2, 2021.
  2. Stevenson, Seth. Snapchat Releases First Hardware Product, Spectacles. September 24, 2016. wjs.com. Retrieved Feb 2, 2021.
  3. Smith, Adam. Snapchat investigating Itself after ex-employees speak out against 'racist' work culture, reports claim. July 22, 2020. independent.co.uk. Retrieved Feb 2, 2021.
  4. Jump up to: 4.0 4.1 Gross, Elana Lyn. Just 10.9% Of Snap Employees Are Black Or Latinx, Company Discloses Amid Allegations Of Discrimination. July 29, 2020. forbes.com. Retrieved Feb 2, 2021.