Daily Times

Pop star Rihanna has delivered a big blow to famous multimedia messaging app Snapchat for an ad making a joke of domestic violence that she suffered at the hands of her then boyfriend Chris Brown; this caused the stock value to plummet by nearly 5% and the company’s worth to lose $1 billion overnight.

Snapchat had apologised and pulled the ad a day before, but Rihanna rejected the apology and decided to fight back. This is when she urged her fans to delete the app, as it was too big to be an innocent mistake.

Ironically, Rihanna used the platform Instagram, which is a rival multimedia messaging app, to express her disgust.

Snapchat was criticised on social media when an advert of a third-party gaming app emerged on the platform urging the viewers to ‘slap Rihanna’ or ‘punch Chris Brown’.

American Education activist Brittany Packnett tweeted her disgust in the following words: “I know that social media ads go through an approval process from the platform. This means @Snapchat approved an ad that makes light of domestic violence. The update ain’t the only thing that’s wack over there, friends.”

Activist Chelsea Clinton who is also the only daughter of former US president Bill Clinton and presidential candidate in the previous election, Hillary Clinton, replied to Packnett’s comment saying, “Just awful. Awful that anyone thinks this is funny. Awful that anyone thinks this is appropriate. Awful that any company would approve this. Thank you Brittany for calling this out.”

It was an unstoppable uproar on social media after that. Following the huge backlash, Snapchat pulled the advert and apologised saying they regretted how the ad slipped through their review process.

But Rihanna rightly refused to remain silent and lambasted the mockery saying this wasn’t just any stupid mistake. She said that the ad contained animations and graphics, which indicated that the makers of the ad took their time and very own thought process to come up with the campaign, to glorify domestic violence and make fun of abuse victims.

Through an Instagram story, Rihanna said, “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,” she went on to say.

Rihanna has been applauded on social media for standing up and lending her voice to abuse victims.

The Guardian has quoted Snap spokesperson as saying, “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.”

Not that it matters, but this blow to Snapchat comes at a time when the company has already suffered some loss because of its prime features being replicated on rival apps such as Instagram. Also, only last month the company also suffered a loss of $1.3 billion when Kylie Jenner tweeted the app was useless and that she no longer uses it.

The writer is the Digital Editor, Daily Times and can be reached at me@farhanjanjua.com. He tweets and instagrams @FarhanJanjua

Published in Daily Times, March 17^th 2018.