Handling a social media account, especially one for a publication as respected as The Economist, one must make sure to be factually correct at all times or face the ire and sneer of netizens, as the admin for the London-based magazine’s Twitter account recently found out.
On Monday, The Economist pushed their story titled, “Indonesia binges on e-commerce” on Twitter with not one, but two errors: 1. misspelling Indonesian e-commerce giant Bukalapak as “Bukalpak” and 2. referring to Tokopedia and Bukalapak as Singaporean e-commerce startups.
Proud Indonesian netizens soon pounced on the mistakes (mostly the geographical gaffe rather than the typo) and, as we’ve come to expect from Indonesian netizens, they clearly had a lot of fun making fun of them:
Some responded by using gifs, just like this one with the classic Loki quote:
Dear admin…….. pic.twitter.com/OyPJjlpP1P
— Primastya Yudha Oktara (@oktara_official) January 14, 2019
Some wondered if The Economist has a fact-checker in their employ:
For the love of God, do you guys have no fact checkers anymore?
1st, they’re from friggin’ INDONESIA.
2nd, it’s Bukalapak.— Lynda Ibrahim (@lyndaibrahim) January 14, 2019
And there is a fair share of people who thought the erroneous tweet was all part of an elaborate conspiracy.
Kayanya sengaja biar engagementnya tinggi https://t.co/dvcV055QzA
— Fediora Gaska (@gaskafedi) January 15, 2019
“They probably deliberately tweeted this to increase their engagement”
Tokopedia hasn’t yet responded to the tweet, but Bukalapak’s founder and CEO Achmad Zaky jumped in as well and he didn’t mince his words:
I dont know why The Economist can be so stupid https://t.co/nrMgp6CpX5
— Achmad Zaky (@achmadzaky) January 14, 2019
Surprisingly, as of the time of writing, the tweet still hasn’t been taken down.
(UPDATE: It looks like they deleted the tweet around 4:45pm on Tuesday)
It’s very human to make mistakes, and even social media admins aren’t immune to it. Whatever it is that caused their negligence, it does seem like The Economist got a huge boost (from confused or angry Indonesians) in their Twitter engagement.
(Also, things like this make us wish Twitter would roll out an “edit tweet” feature soon.)
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