Antisemitic caricatures pulled from GIPHY sharing platform

A popular gif sharing platform has pulled two antisemitic caricatures from its database, after it was approached by Jewish News.

Searches for the terms “Jews” and “Jewish people” on GIPHY’s Twitter platform yielded two antisemitic caricatures, Jewish News discovered on Friday.

GIPHY is a database of short, looping videos, which can be shared on social media, in text messages, and at the GIPHY.com website.

One image, which has since been removed, depicted a man with an exaggerated crooked nose rubbing his hands together and the words “Jew News” and “McDonalds sacked in Iran.”

The other gif, which has also been removed, featured the same face with the body of Spongebob Squarepants, and the words: “I am a man a shekel richer.”

Mark Gardner from the CST said: “This is another example of how social media, Internet searches and algorithms can cause the circulation of Jewish-related material that may be outright antisemitic, or simply bizarre.”

GIPHY blocks “highly insensitive and volatile” terms from delivering results and has filters in place to review all content available on the platform, according to a spokesperson.

A spokesperson said: “GIPHY has a zero tolerance policy for any content that violates our community guidelines, including anything that promotes hate, violence, racism, pornography or bullying.

“In the event that content is identified that falls outside of our guidelines, we remove that content immediately upon discovery.”

Users can report questionable content to support@giphy.com.