Patriots' automated Twitter reply sends out racial slur

[amigocabal]

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nfl-shutd ... 40725.html

Patriots' automated Twitter reply sends out racial slur
By Frank Schwab November 13, 2014 10:40 PM Shutdown Corner


The New England Patriots wanted to thank their fans for reaching one million Twitter followers with an automated tweet that showed each fan's Twitter handle on a digital Patriots jersey if they retweeted this message celebrating reaching one million.

The social media department didn't think this one through.

There are some terrible people in the world, and at least one retweeted that message. So one of the tweets that went out from the Patriots account was to a person who uses "IHATE" and a racial slur at the end of that, and that handle with the racial slur on a digital jersey...

[Crossroads Inc.]

SO the "Patriots" did NOT send out a "racial slur"
Their automated program simply copy and pasted all of the Usernames in their archives, which happened to contain people who had made up racists names then?

I mean, if your going to fault them for anything it would simply be no realize people on the internet would abuse what they were doing.

[amigocabal]

SO the "Patriots" did NOT send out a "racial slur"
Their automated program simply copy and pasted all of the Usernames in their archives, which happened to contain people who had made up racists names then?

I mean, if your going to fault them for anything it would simply be no realize people on the internet would abuse what they were doing.

So then it is like the U.S. Post office delivering mail that contains racist messages.

[bilateralrope]

SO the "Patriots" did NOT send out a "racial slur"
Their automated program simply copy and pasted all of the Usernames in their archives, which happened to contain people who had made up racists names then?

I mean, if your going to fault them for anything it would simply be no realize people on the internet would abuse what they were doing.

Things like that are always going to get someone abusing them. Someone will always bypass the filters and trying to stop those people too much will cause more problems for everyone else.

So then it is like the U.S. Post office delivering mail that contains racist messages.

Pretty much.
It's not even the worst case of this happening. The worst I've heard of is a conference that had large screens displaying every tweet with the conferences hashtag and 4chan found out about it.

[biostem]

SO the "Patriots" did NOT send out a "racial slur"
Their automated program simply copy and pasted all of the Usernames in their archives, which happened to contain people who had made up racists names then?

I mean, if your going to fault them for anything it would simply be no realize people on the internet would abuse what they were doing.

Even if the program contained a filter to block out profanity and racial slurs, someone could sneak something through by substituting a number or character instead of a letter, or by using words that are curses in other languages. TBH, this is basically why user-created content is limited in most games to stuff from existing "libraries" of resources, or otherwise confined to one's own computer/console.

[KlavoHunter]

This reminds me of a website that allowed users to name aborted babies, and it would tweet their names out.

Then of course someone gave a baby a name that was a terrorist threat directed at an airline...

[Havok]

This is such a NON fucking issue.
Unless Tom Brady, Bill Belichik, or Robert Craft are sitting at the computer twirling their mustaches (which granted, a lot of NFL fans want to believe ) sending out the tweet, this is a patently stupid thing to talk about or report and at MOST is an issue for the IT department/people the Patriots employ and is another exemplary example of the really "great" 24/7 news cycle.

[Flagg]

Why is this news?

[Purple]

Why is this news?

Because the 24h internet news cycle has to constantly produce new bullshit to satisfy peoples need to be outraged and express 20 minutes of hate at stuff in order to feel smug about them self. So when real news is lacking (which is basically 23 out of those 24 hours) it has to dredge up something, anything at all to get people their fix. So we end up with stories such as this or what shirt some random guy is wearing or what celebrity did what.

[Ziggy Stardust]

Alright, people, I think it's a bit of a stretch to use this as an example of the moral degradation of the 24-hour news cycle. This wasn't fucking CNN. It was a short blog post on Yahoo Sports. It's a vaguely amusing and public thing that happened, so a sports blogger mentioned it. This really isn't worth hyperventilating about just so you can spew some self-congratulatory drivel about how the news media is oh-so-horrible.

I'm the last person to defend the idiocy inherent in mainstream news, but this wasn't fucking mainstream news blaring out a fake controversy, it was a niche blog post describing something silly happening within the purview of that niche. This would be like me going onto a video game blog that mentions a random glitch in the news Assassin' Creed and complaining, "WHY IS THIS NEWS BEING SHOVED DOWN MY THROAT OMG LOL WTF". I mean, is it really such a surprise to you that a hobby site on the Internet has a lot of superfluous details related to that hobby?

Get over yourselves.

[Purple]

Dude. You need to get over your self. And once you are done you need to get over your self once more for good measure.

I newer said anything about mainstream media and their 24h news cycle. I only mentioned a 24h news cycle. It just so happens that the feature is not unique to CNN. The concept of providing a constant stream of news 24h a day is something that has gripped virtually all major and minor news providers who have access to their own TV channel or the internet. And thus it has produced an inordinate amount of crap.

Yahoo is my homepage. I read their news basically every day. And during the last few years I have witnessed first hand just how mind numbingly stupid some of the drivel that comes out of them is. Sure, there are gems here and there. And most of the articles are just meh. But you also get stuff that is so stupid that I read it to marvel at the sheer stupidity. And this serves to reinforce my stance that for the most part when you absolutely positively need to fill out the whole day with fresh news you are going to be doing so mostly with crap.

Not that CNN is better mind you. Some of the stupidity I've seen them show was just as bad. And most of their news is just stuff that really does not deserve to be on a major news network but on a local radio station. But I digress.