Love Island’s Montana Brown has slammed fellow reality stars for cashing in on dangerous and misleading paid Instagram promotions.
Montana has spoken out after influencers including Geordie Shore’s Chloe Ferry and The Only Way is Essex’s Myles Barnett were paid to promote debt-clearing site Debt Slayers - without warning their young audience of its negative impact.
While telling followers they could ‘easily slash 85 per cent of their debt’ they failed to say this was due to signing an official document which acts as an alternative to filing for bankruptcy.
Montana, 25, has said that the latest scheme proves some influencers “completely take advantage of [their] massive following, sign up to any brand deal that comes along, then take the money and run”.
“Chances are, if it seems too good to be true, it probably is,” she told The Sun.
“When I was younger I could have very easily been taken in by such an alluring promise. And in fact I was.
“In my teens I was so desperate to be skinny, I bought fat-burning pills from a really dodgy website.
“I hid them from my family and went on a dangerous juice diet — all in a quest to be super-skinny.”
“Luckily I was fine, but who knows what they could have done to my health? I had no idea what was in them," Montana added.
“Now I’m old enough and wise enough to know that those pills were really gambling with my wellbeing.”
Debt Slayers has subsequently been chastised by advertising standards for exaggerating its ability to reduce debt.
The ads have since been banned by the Advertising Standards Authority who say they were misleading and not clearly labelled as paid-for posts.
“It’s so important for young kids to see good role models whose behaviour they can copy,” Montana added.
“I do think some celebrities may take for granted the power they wield by promoting a product to their fanbase, but it’s time they woke up to that.”
