Rihanna rage sends Snap stock in swoon
Rihanna called out Snapchat on Thursday for running a sickening ad that asked users if they would rather “slap Rihanna” or “punch Chris Brown,” pushing shares of the messaging app’s parent down 3.6 percent. Snap Inc. fell to $17.20. “Now SNAPCHAT I know you already know you ain’t my fav app out there!” the 30-year-old songbird wrote in an Instagram tirade. “I’d love to call this ignorance, but I know you ain’t that dumb!”
The shocking ad — which referred to Brown’s 2009 conviction for brutally assaulting Rihanna in a car — provoked disgust on social media over the weekend, with some vowing to delete Snapchat from their phones.
“This isn’t about my personal feelings,” Rihanna added, “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.”
Even Chelsea Clinton weighed in on the mess, tweeting that it was “awful that any company would approve this.”
Snap Inc. responded on Thursday by calling the ad “disgusting” and saying it “never should have appeared on our service.”
Earlier in the week, Snapchat had given a relatively clinical statement that the offending ad “was reviewed and approved in error as it violates our advertising guidelines.”
The sell-off in Snap shares is the second at the hands of a celebrity in less than a month. In February, Kylie Jenner complained about the texting app’s redesign, causing the company to lose more than $1 billion in market value.