The apparent social media influencer said the homeless man had agreed to help them with the video and that he already knew he would be given rice with chicken bones purely for the video.

In a video, Instagram user @aluk_77 maintained that they did not actually give the man just chicken bones but had bought him a full meal with two pieces of fried chicken.

He said their intention was to post content on being more charitable, adding that this was supposed to be the first of several videos.

“But we did not expect the video to cause such a huge uproar, and this is our mistake. We are sorry.

“We had packed the complete meal from the start, which we gave him later. He knew about it from the beginning.

“We are sorry. We will be more sincere in giving back to society and produce more meaningful videos. We hope everyone will forgive us, we’re sorry,” he said.

The initial video, which has since been deleted, sparked backlash from netizens, with some even calling for an investigation to be launched against them.

At the time of writing, he had about 140,000 followers on Instagram.