Serious political meeting upstaged by not-so-serious cat filter

With whiskers and all.
By Johnny Lieu  on 
Serious political meeting upstaged by not-so-serious cat filter
Meow. Credit: FAROOQ NAEEM/AFP/Getty Images

Despite the images, Pakistani politician Shaukat Yousafzai is not wearing cat ears during a government meeting.

Yousafzai was on the end of an unfortunate social media error when the cat filter in Facebook Live accidentally became active last Friday, plonking kitty ears and whiskers on him.

"I wasn't the only one — two officials sitting along me were also hit by the cat filter," Yousafzai later told Agence France-Presse.

The broadcast on the Facebook page of political party Tehreek-e-Insaf has since been deleted. Fortunately, people took screenshots, complete with comments of viewers who had clearly noticed the filter.

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In a statement by the political party, Tehreek-e-Insaf said it determined the cat filter was a case of "human error" by one of its volunteers, and that it was removed within a matter of minutes.

"All necessary actions have been taken to avoid such incident[s] in future with a great emphasis on strict enforcement of [standard operating procedures] and protocol for live coverage by the ground teams," the statement read.

Despite the serious sounding statement, Yousafzai shrugged off the incident. "Let's not take everything so seriously," he said.

It is just a cat filter, after all.

Mashable Image
Johnny Lieu

Mashable Australia's Web Culture Reporter.Reach out to me on Twitter at @Johnny_Lieu or via email at jlieu [at] mashable.com


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