Pizza Hut in Saudi Arabia posts offensive ad ... and people are furious

Late on Sunday, Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Commerce and Investment announced that it will be taking legal action against Pizza Hut over an offensive stuttering ad they shared on Twitter. 

The ad was sent out in a tweet meant to mark "International Stuttering Awareness Day", on Sunday. 

In its caption, letters were repeated in a way that referenced those who suffer from stuttering, "a communication disorder in which the flow of speech is broken by repetitions, prolongations, or abnormal stoppages of sounds and syllables".

Even though the tweet was meant to be funny, it wasn't taken lightly by social media users, who responded with outrage, deeming it 'inappropriate' and 'offensive'.

Here's how the entire incident went down: 

"The ad violates our rules. We will be taking appropriate action against it after we contact the company involved."

"On Internatonal Stuttering Awareness Day, Pizza Hut offensively trolled people who suffer from the communication disorder." 

"This is such a silly, offensive ad, the least thing we should do is boycott Pizza Hut so that other brands take note."

"I am against the boycott, instead, I call on Pizza Hut to apologize and work on supporting treatment for those who suffer from stuttering."

"What rules did the ad violate?"

"We get upset over a satirical ad when we're a satirical society who makes fun of everything. We live on making fun of people and then ask brands and companies to promote their products with exaggerated, ideal, morality."

Soon after authorities announced they were taking action against the brand, Pizza Hut retracted the tweet and issued an apology over the matter. 

"Pizza Hut apologizes over the irresponsible tweet which offended a group of people who we deeply care about. Action has been taken against the person who made this error," the apology read. 

In a bid to redeem itself, the restaurant's management also added that it will now be supporting several organizations who work with stutterers. 

"You deleted it?!... Sorry we won't forget about it. And even if this doesn't make much of a difference, I am boycotting Pizza Hut. It isn't acceptable for companies to create such offensive campaigns and then delete them and pretend nothing happened."