PM's Al Qaeda tweet links to sexy lingerie site
Officials in the French Prime Minister's office have been left red-faced after a tweet intended to enlighten Twitter followers about a new policy dealing with the financing of terrorist groups like Al Qaeda, directed them to, of all things, a steamy lingerie online catalogue.
A Freudian slip or a simple computer error?
Either way, civil servants at the office of French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault were forced to acknowledge an embarrassing gaffe this week.
One member of staff made the unfortunate error of sending out a tweet with a link directing followers to the ‘clubwear’ section of “Forplay,” a US-based lingerie catalogue.
The tweet, published on Sunday by the DILA (Legal and Administrative Information Directorate), which is run by the PM’s office, was supposed to link to a new French policy on terrorist financing, and included the hashtags #Terrorism and #AlQaeda.
Instead, the account’s more than 5,000 followers were surprised to find they had been directed to an online catalogue advertising “sleeveless mini clubwear dresses” and “metallic tank mini dresses.”
Despite being published early on Sunday morning, and being alerted to the error by Twitter users, the DILA account didn’t rectify the mistake until Monday, deleting the original tweet in the process.
No explanation was given as to how the wrong link was pasted into the tweet with staff simply blaming a “URL bug”.
One follower who pointed out the slight discrepancy between the link's content and the tweet's subject matter received a no doubt embarrassed "Thank you" for notifying DILA.
"Thanks for your vigilance on this mistake. We're publishing the corrected version right away."
@PierrickFil Merci de votre vigilance pour ce fail. Nous publions la corrections immédiatement. bL
— DILA (@dila_tweet) August 12, 2013
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A Freudian slip or a simple computer error?
Either way, civil servants at the office of French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault were forced to acknowledge an embarrassing gaffe this week.
One member of staff made the unfortunate error of sending out a tweet with a link directing followers to the ‘clubwear’ section of “Forplay,” a US-based lingerie catalogue.
The tweet, published on Sunday by the DILA (Legal and Administrative Information Directorate), which is run by the PM’s office, was supposed to link to a new French policy on terrorist financing, and included the hashtags #Terrorism and #AlQaeda.
Instead, the account’s more than 5,000 followers were surprised to find they had been directed to an online catalogue advertising “sleeveless mini clubwear dresses” and “metallic tank mini dresses.”
Despite being published early on Sunday morning, and being alerted to the error by Twitter users, the DILA account didn’t rectify the mistake until Monday, deleting the original tweet in the process.
No explanation was given as to how the wrong link was pasted into the tweet with staff simply blaming a “URL bug”.
One follower who pointed out the slight discrepancy between the link's content and the tweet's subject matter received a no doubt embarrassed "Thank you" for notifying DILA.
"Thanks for your vigilance on this mistake. We're publishing the corrected version right away."
@PierrickFil Merci de votre vigilance pour ce fail. Nous publions la corrections immédiatement. bL
— DILA (@dila_tweet) August 12, 2013
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