We want to directly address Catherine’s video that has been circulating online regarding the Pin Trading App. Please understand that we take these allegations and accusations very seriously and want to be clear that there is absolutely no room for any type of racial erasure or discrimination of anyone’s ethnic traits or heritage in any capacity.
We partnered with Catherine for content collaboration from February 2026 through July 2026. We absolutely loved working with her from day one. The energy and enthusiasm that she brought to the world through her content was exactly the reason why we were so happy to have her collaborate on behalf of our brand. Over those five months, she made 19 original videos for us and was compensated $910.00 USD.
On August 7, 2026, Catherine brought to our attention via an Instagram direct message that she believed there was an active ad campaign that was running from content she originally produced and that it appeared to be altered. Upon this notice, we immediately disabled all of our ad campaigns on Meta to conduct a thorough audit of the situation. What we later were able to discover is that Meta’s Advantage+ Creative Standard Enhancements were auto-enabled across our entire marketing campaigns. What this feature is designed to do according to Meta’s own documentation is that it will, “automatically create variations of your ad with different text combinations, media enhancements and compositional changes,” and will “automatically adjust the aspect ratio, brightness, and contrast of your ad creative.”
We now can acknowledge that this was the exact auto-enabled feature provided by Meta that automatically generated derivatives of all of our marketing ad creatives. At no point ever did anyone on our entire team intentionally attempt or instruct anyone or anything to alter Catherine’s features, heritage, or ethnicity in any capacity whatsoever. This was a systematic failure on our part and oversight for leaving this feature auto-enabled and we truly apologize for the lack of due diligence and confusion that this has caused.
Like many businesses, we relied on and trusted Meta’s suggested marketing features that were offered to us without any internal review. And this is where we ultimately failed as a company. These ad campaigns and the altered versions should have never run in the first place and we should have had much better safeguards in place to have caught it before it went public. We are accepting full responsibility for not verifying what the full scope of this Advantage+ Creative Standard Enhancement auto-enabled feature truly meant when it came to automatically generating different versions of an ad creative outside of the scope that it specified to us and what is made known and public of the feature itself and for not verifying the ad creatives that were in rotation.
Now we would like to address the narrative that is circulating online that our team was the one who proactively initiated conversation with Catherine regarding a monetary, “amount to resolve the situation". In the original message that Catherine sent to notify us of the situation, she stated, “i’d also like to understand how you intend to address compensation for the additional usage that has already taken place”. Although we understood internally that the matter was still unfolding behind the scenes and that there was more to learn about the situation, we wanted to immediately act in good faith to a valued creator and address her financial compensation request directly. It was never our initial intent to just simply pay to have this situation swept under the rug. Just like Catherine, we wanted to solve the matter at hand immediately but also wanted to address her questions about compensation respectfully. Unfortunately, we were unable to come to an agreement on Instagram direct messages. On September 2, 2026, our company received an 83-page Pre-Suit Settlement Demand letter from Catherine’s attorney. The demand formally requested a full settlement payment of $85,000.00 USD in addition to other demands, stating that, “in exchange she will execute a mutual release”. The legal demand set a response deadline for our company to respond by September 17th, 2026. Our team was still in the process of reviewing and replying to the demand letter but was unable to respond by the deadline date. Approximately 24 hours after the deadline, on Friday, September 18th, 2026, Catherine went public with her video on both Instagram and TikTok.
For myself, Andy, this situation hits deeply close to home. I am the son of two immigrant parents who left Vietnam to build a brighter future for their family here in the United States. I can understand and empathize fully with the message in the video regarding the importance of how critical it is that the physical features we inherit from our families connect us to our heritage, our culture, and our identities. English has always been my second language, and I am proud to carry on the traditions and heritage my parents have instilled in me throughout my entire life and I am so grateful to share that experience with my beloved partner and Co-founder, Emily.
The insinuation that our company stands for intentional racial and heritage erasure and initiated and attempted to strictly resolve this matter via compensation goes against every single thing we believe as individuals. We have taken the liberty to provide the documented context of this matter to ensure that our company, our partners, and our community can gain clarity into this situation and hear from us personally.
We want to take this time to sincerely and genuinely apologize to Catherine for our communication breakdowns and technical oversight of the matter and how it was handled. Please understand this was never about us intentionally changing who you are or your heritage and ethnicity in any way, rather a complete failure on our end of oversight into a feature that we were not properly educated on. We would also like to apologize to the entire community of users who rely on the Pin Trading App for all of the confusion, frustration, and negativity this situation has brought to the community that we all love and call home.
As a company, we are completely owning our mistakes and as the founders we are committed to learning from this situation to ensure this never happens again. We truly love and thank every single one of you for all of the support you have given us throughout this journey. We genuinely care deeply about creating a community where everyone feels respected, welcome, and above all, valued regardless of race, ethnicity, or background. Our promise to the community is that we will work and strive every single day to become a better company for our users, our creators, and the entire pin community as whole. We look forward to getting the opportunity to serve and earn back your trust and support.
Andy & Emily
Co-founders, Pin Trading App
