Note to brands: don’t trust a “filtering system” to safeguard your social media accounts.
The New England Patriots became the first NFL team to hit one million followers on Twitter, and it celebrated the milestone Thursday by blasting out images of a Patriots jersey with users’ Twitter handles on the back to those who retweeted the account.
We’re saying thanks to @patriots‘ 1million followers w/ custom digital Pats jerseys – RT for yours! #1MillionPatriots pic.twitter.com/u2SfidCb9e
— New England Patriots (@Patriots) November 13, 2014
The promo ran smoothly until a user with the handle @IHATENIGGERSS got his “custom digital jersey”:
.@Patriots Twitter Thank You Includes N-Word, Jersey Mockup. Welp? http://t.co/25feZ0qTR0 pic.twitter.com/fvSDzD9Jk4
— Hilary Sargent (@lilsarg) November 14, 2014
The team deleted the tweet and said it slipped through because a “filtering system” failed:
We apologize for the regrettable tweet that went out from our account. Our filtering system failed & we will be more vigilant in the future.
— New England Patriots (@Patriots) November 14, 2014
@IHATETHEPATRIOTS would have been funny. It’s hard to believe that filters would not catch the n-word burried inside a sentence without spaces. More disturbing is the type of racist mind that would originate a sentence expressing that despicable sentiment.
This says more about Twitter’s policies and filters as a company than it does about the Pats.
“New England Patriots Apologize For Sending Out N-Word In Twitter Promo”
And when will Twitter be apologizing for that name’s existence in the first place (not to mention it’s continued existence even after this incident)?
@Twitter’s priority is trying to figure out how to make money long term, not this kind of thing.
Twitter is a disease worse than Ebola.
Some idiot gets something through a filter. How is that a story? We should not be giving them attention.