Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg next to a tweet

Anthony Quintano/Flickr Tyler Menzel/Twitter Mikael Thalen

Giphy denies removing GIFs of Mark Zuckerberg after being purchased by Facebook

Numerous users reported being unable to use GIFs of Zuck.

 

Mikael Thalen

Tech

Posted on May 15, 2020

Giphy has denied allegations that it removed GIFs of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg after the social media giant purchased the company.

After the news that Facebook acquired the GIF repository for $400 million broke on Friday, users began reporting that GIFs of Zuckerberg had stopped working.

In a video posted to Twitter, one user alleged to have received a message indicating that the Zuckerberg GIF they had chosen was “not available” while using Giphy in iMessage.

“It didn’t take long for Facebook to ruin Giphy,” Twitter user @ismh wrote.

https://twitter.com/ismh/status/1261303945504399361?s=20

Several other users claimed that they too could no longer use such GIFs while utilizing Giphy in Slack.

“Anyone else notice that searches for Zuckerberg GIFs in the Giphy Slack plugin are suddenly coming up empty?” Twitter user @ianhillmedia wrote.

https://twitter.com/strutting/status/1261343557702410240?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1261343557702410240&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fmashable.com%2Farticle%2Fgiphy-mark-zuckerberg-gifs%2F

But many who attempted to recreate the issue reported having no problem selecting and using GIFs of the Facebook founder.

“Worked fine for me,” Twitter user @flyingplancha wrote.

https://twitter.com/flyingplancha/status/1261340938577874948?s=20

The reports eventually made their way to Tyler Menzel, the head of Content & Editorial at Giphy.

Menzel denied that Giphy had removed any GIFs of Zuckerberg and stated that the company only takes down content “that violates our guidelines.”

“Hearing reports that we are taking down GIFs, specifically of Mark Zuckerberg,” Menzel said. “Want to clarify that this is not true as we only take down content that violates our guidelines. We are looking into the issue immediately, but can confirm we have not intentionally taken anything down.”

The company thus far has not reported back on what may have caused the alleged issue.

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*First Published: May 15, 2020, 6:26 pm CDT