It's been a difficult few months for Snapchat, and things don't appear to be getting any better. Yesterday, singer Rihanna slammed the photo/video-sharing platform for running an ad that appeared to make light of the violent assault she suffered at the hands of Chris Brown in 2009.
The advertisement, which was for a game called 'Would You Rather,' asked people if they would "rather slap Rihanna or punch Chris Brown." Snap told the BBC that despite being reviewed and approved, the ad was published "in error" and had been removed immediately as it violated its advertising guidelines. "We are sorry that this happened," it added.
Rihanna responded to the ad in an Instagram story, telling her 61 million followers that the company "spent money to animate something that would intentionally bring shame to DV [domestic violence] victims and made a joke of it!!"
"Shame on you," said Rihanna. "Throw the whole app-oligy away," she added.
The response prompted Snap to put out another apology. "This advertisement is disgusting and never should have appeared on our service. 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," a spokesperson said.
This is the second time in recent weeks that a celebrity has influenced Snap Inc.'s shares, which were down 4.7 percent on Thursday. In February, a Kylie Jenner tweet to her 24.5 million followers played a part in the company's stock falling 6 percent.
Many users aren't happy about Snapchat's redesign, which led to 1.2 million people signing a change.org petition demanding it revert back to the old system
The latest incident comes just after both Snapchat and Instagram temporarily removed their Giphy GIF sticker feature after users noticed a racist GIF had appeared as an option.
