Pop star Rihanna on Thursday denounced Snapchat after an advertisement made light of her beating by fellow pop star Chris Brown, sending the company's share prices tumbling.
The social media platform which counts 187 million users, especially young people drawn to its quickly vanishing posts had featured an advertisement for "Would You Rather?," a game app that asks sometimes provocative questions.
The commercial showed the two singers and asked Snapchat users whether they would rather "slap Rihanna" or "punch Chris Brown." The company pulled the advertisement and apologized, but Rihanna took to rival platform Instagram to denounce Snapchat. "You spent money to animate something that would intentionally bring shame to DV (domestic violence) victims and made a joke of it!!!!" she wrote.
According to CNN, Snapchat Lost $800 Million After Rihanna Criticized Its Offensive Ad. The ad, which was created by a third party but had to undergo an approval process by Snapchat, was taken down, but not before quite a lot of damage was done. Snapchat stocks plunged by 4 percent on Thursday, according to The Wall Street Journal, losing the app nearly a billion dollars this week—evidently due to Rihanna fans who decided to delete the platform from their smartphones.