Instagram Mistakenly Uses Rape Threat to Attract People Who Aren't on the App

Instagram's technical problems have become subject to vivid discussions on social media, after the social network shared a rape and death threat from a person's account as an advertisement.

The Guardian reporter Olivia Solon shared on her Twitter account a post showing how a rape threat she received a year ago from an unknown Instagram user was reposted on Facebook as an ad.

Instagram did not explain why it had chosen exactly this post to share with Solon's Facebook friends and attract those who aren't using the app. One of the reasons could be the high number of sympathetic comments left by Solon's followers that the system has taken as a sign of high engagement.

Instagram is using one of my most "engaging" posts to advertise its service to others on Facebook 😂 pic.twitter.com/lyEBHQXMfa

— Olivia Solon (@oliviasolon) 21 сентября 2017 г.

​

Earlier, Facebook had suspended the use of user-reported fields after it turned out that some racist and anti-Semitic categories were generated on the social network's advertising system.

Facebook has temporarily shut down the "self-advertising targeted fields" in its advertising system following complaints that advertisers could target users interested in such themes as "Jew Hater" and "Hitler did nothing wrong."