Apple announced the launch of its new iTunes store in Russia Tuesday. Little did they know the “In Soviet Russia…” joke would live up to its name. How about a side of sex with your new app?
Company executives
promised the store would feature local singers like Ёлка and other world-renowned musicians, describing the venture as “revolutionary.”
That’s one way of putting it.
Another way of putting it, in the words of a full-page advertisement spanning the across the entire store: “Date a pornstar escort tonight!”
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A programmer working on the website’s infrastructure used a few temporary placeholders but forgot to change them before the store’s launch. For instance, instead of writing “http://www[dot]itunes[dot]rus,” he may have used “http://www[dot]xxx[dot]xxx” with plans to alter the text after an official domain was settled upon.
As far as the computer is concerned, though, the latter is a legitimate domain — and it links to a pornography website.
So, pornographic material began popping up on the Russian iTunes wherever the placeholder was found, specifically in a section titled “
More Films in Different Languages.”
The website servers are currently down. Let’s not be too quick to blame it on increased traffic.