March 16 (UPI) — Rihanna took Snapchat to task Thursday after the social media company published an ad using her image that made fun of her being a victim of domestic violence.
The ad, for a Snapchat game called “Would You Rather?” included an image of Rihanna and singer Chris Brown that asked users if they would rather “slap” Rihanna or “punch” Chris Brown.
The ad referred to the 2009 incident in which Brown was accused of assaulting then-girlfriend Rihanna and later pleaded guilty to felony assault.
After Rihanna saw the Snapchat ad, she went on Instagram to scold the company for making fun of her being a victim of domestic violence.
“Now SNAPCHAT I know you already know you ain’t my favorite app out there! But I’m just trying to figure out what the point was with this mess!” Rihanna wrote. “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 later issued an apology.
“This advertisement is disgusting and never should have appeared on our service,” a spokesperson for the company 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.”
After Rihanna’s post, Snapchat shares took a nearly 5 percent dip.
