Add one more thing you need to check before going live in the era of social media streaming: Make sure you don’t have any embarrassing filters applied to your video.
One Pakistani politician learned this the hard way as he delivered a press conference simulcast via livestream on Facebook Live with the cat face filter applied.
As you can imagine, it did much to undercut whatever point the official was trying to make and has since become a viral icon of sorts. Shaukat Yousafzai was holding a press conference when the filter appeared out of nowhere blanketing his face as well as two of his colleagues on the panel with the cat face and whiskers filter popular among everyone from celebs to influencers to Instagrammers around the world.
A member of the party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), the stream was broadcast via their Facebook account and the error was corrected. Nonetheless, this didn’t stop it from becoming one of the best misapplications of a face filter we’ve seen in some time. As these things tend to go, PTI blamed it all on human error in a statement to the press via Twitter.
Here is that statement:
“Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s social media team is deemed to be the pioneers of social media in Pakistan. We not only pride ourselves on bringing Pakistani politics to Internet but also feel content in setting high standards of SOPs and etiquette with the help of our dedicated volunteer based SM force. Yesterday, whilst covering a press briefing held by KP’s Information Minister Shoukat Yousafzai, a ‘cat filter’ was witnessed by the viewers which was removed within few minutes.
PTI SM Disciplinary committee probed the matter first hand and concluded in incident as a ‘human error’ by one of our hard working volunteer. All necessary actions have been taken to avoid such incident in the future with a great emphasis on strict enforcement of SOPs and protocol for live coverage by the ground teams.”
You can watch a clip of the video here on Twitter.
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