Why on earth has Instagram deleted its GIF feature?

And will we be getting it back?

Forced changes to our habitual Instagram activity never goes down well – note the public reaction to every Insta update as proof.

There was the time Instagram controversially switched its logo, the algorithm change that affected who saw our posts and don’t even get us started on the threat that our profiles were being changed to a 4×4 photo grid.

While that trial was thankfully a false alarm, the new Instagram change definitely happened – this weekend - and the internet is not happy.

We are of course talking about the removal of Instagram story GIFs.

The relatively new feature was actually one of the only Instagram updates that didn’t cause general outrage, allowing users to add funny moving graphics to their Instagram stories. Removing them however made a lot of people very angry - and a lot of insta stories less interesting.

But why the big change? Well, that’s even more controversial.

Both Instagram and Snapchat removed their Giphy Gif feature after an offensive sticker involving a racist slur appeared in the ‘recommended’ section.

Giphy has since explained that the sticker was down to a bug in its content moderation filters, but both sites removed Giphy from their platforms immediately.

Thankfully it looks like this change is only temporary with the popular feature set to return in the coming weeks - this time without the offensive stickers, please.

We’ll just keep refreshing our phones until our beloved GIFs are restored.