Music megastar Rihanna has slammed Snapchat after an advertisement on the app made light of domestic violence.
The advertisement for a game called “Would You Rather” asked Snap users if they’d rather “Slap Rihanna” or “Punch Chris Brown.”
The tasteless and frankly tone-deaf advert referenced to the rapper Brown’s assault on his then-girlfriend back in 2009.
Is it just me, or is this ad that popped up on my Snapchat extremely tone deaf? Like what were they thinking with this? pic.twitter.com/7kP9RHcgNG
— Royce Mann (@royceforatlanta) March 12, 2018
In a response posed to her Instagram Story, the Umbrella singer wrote: “Now SNAPCHAT I know you already know you ain’t my fav app out there! But I’m just trying to figure out what the point was with this mess! I’d love to call it ignorance, but I know you ain’t that dumb! You spent money to animate something that would intentionally bring shame to DV victims and made a joke of it!!!!
“This isn’t about my personal feelings, cause I don’t have much of them…but all the women, children, and men that have been victims of DV in the past and especially the ones who haven’t made it out yet….you let us down! Shame on you. Throw the whole app-oligy away.”
Snapchat has apologised for the incident, claiming the app made it through the review process by mistake.
It told TechCrunch the ad was “disgusting” and has banned the game’s developer from advertising on Snapchat in the future.
In the statement it said: “We are so sorry we made the terrible mistake of allowing it through our review process. We are investigating how that happened so that we can make sure it never happens again.”
Related: How to undo the 2018 Snapchat update
The incident has taken a toll on Snap’s stock price, wiping around $600m of the social network’s market cap (via CNBC) at the time of writing.
It comes after Kylie Jenner’s vow to quit Snapchat following the unpopular 2018 update. That did an initial $1.3 billion of damage to the company’s value.
2018 has been a rough year for Snapchat thus far. Are you keeping faith with the app? Drop us a line @TrustedReviews on Twitter.
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
