Facebook’s Acquisition of Giphy Could Have an Unexpected Chilling Effect
New content moderation policies, if enacted, would reshape how we communicate online
Facebook’s recent acquisition of Giphy — if it goes through as planned — will give the social media giant more than just a sprawling database of animations to play with: It opens the door to a host of complicated new content moderation issues.
Giphy hosts content that can be more risqué than what Facebook generally shows through its GIF search tools — such as logos for porn companies, or GIFs with swear words written on them — and its library extends far beyond what you can find through Facebook’s own apps. This leaves Facebook with a choice: continue to host R-rated content via Giphy, or enforce its preferences on the rest of the internet.
While Giphy (like Facebook) bans obscene content including explicit pornography, violent imagery, and hate speech, it gives some leeway to certain edge cases of adult content. Users aren’t allowed to upload images of naked people, but they can upload almost naked people in suggestive poses. Giphy uses content rating guidelines that resemble MPAA ratings on films — including PG, PG-13, and R — to denote how appropriate a specific GIF is for different types of audiences, and developers that embed…
