Facebook has acquired Giphy which is the largest platform for GIFs in the world and the company claims that more than 700 million people see the content available on Giphy every day and more of those view counts come from some of the most popular apps available from — Apple’s iMessage to TikTok and Twitter, these apps rely on Giphy’s API and archives to allow their users share and post GIFs.
This acquisition raises concerns over the use of GIFs for users on platforms that are not owned by Facebook and its likely that some of these platforms will stop using Giphy APIs which is now owned by Facebook.
Not just that these companies don’t want to use the service of a rival company but Facebook’s privacy issues are another reason behind the concern.
Facebook on the other side says that the developers will be able to access Giphy services the same as they had before this acquisition. “People will still be able to upload GIFs; developers and API partners will continue to have the same access to GIPHY’s APIs, and GIPHY’s creative community will still be able to create great content,” Vishal Shah, Instagram’s vice president of product, said in a blog post on Friday.
Facebook has also said that there are no tracking pixels, cookies, or any other embedded user tracking mechanisms in Giphy’s GIFs or stickers. Messaging service Telegram mentioned on its Twitter account that the Giphy API can see your search terms, but not any of your data, Facebook says Telegram’s tweet is accurate but there’s always a chance that Facebook could make changes to Giphy in the future or early which is why many of the services may drop out of using Giphy at the moment.
Some of the apps that rely on Giphy services:
Apple iMessage
Signal
Mailchimp
Slack
Snapchat
Telegram
TikTok
Tinder
Trello
