Coca-Cola is being criticised for a new tool that lets customers personalise their own bottles of coke - because words like ‘Palestine’ are banned, while terms like ‘white pride’ and ‘QAnon’ are allowed.
When testing out the tool, indy100 learned that the likes of ‘Palestine’ and ‘Black Lives Matter’ and ‘BLM’ were not included in the company’s approved words and terms list.
However, phrases like ‘White pride’, ‘fascism,’ ‘Nazis rule’ and ‘QAnon’ were all accepted.
That being said ‘Nazis,’ ‘Trump won’, ‘Brexit’ and ‘ACAB’ were not accepted.
Some names with political implications were not accepted either these included ‘Trump,’ ‘Biden’, ‘Obama,’ ‘Putin’ and ‘Osama.’ ‘Boris Johnson’, ‘Trudeau,’ and ‘Bolsanaro’ did make it through the filter. However some of these do come with a ‘Pending Approval’ message which would indicate that Coca-Cola haven’t made a decision on these terms yet.
It had earlier been reported by Twitter users that ‘Blue Lives Matter’ and ‘Israel’ was being accepted but they both now appear to have been banned also.
Amusingly, the likes of ‘Pepsi’ and ‘Dr Pepper’ have also been banned.
Whenever you type in a banned word or term you get the following message: “Oops! Looks like the name you requested is not an approved one. Names may not be approved if they’re potentially offensive to other people, trademarked, or celebrity names. We’ve worked hard to get this list right, but sometimes we mess up. If you think this is an error, please contact our Customer Care team. Otherwise, please try again, keep it fun and in the spirit of sharing!”
Some have claimed that there are ways to cheat the system by using spaces and full stops but that appears to have stopped by the time indy100 tried.
It seems including a banned word in a sentence (even just adding a space and a period) will bypass the filter. Examples (BLM uses the two lines feature, and I STILL needed the space and period to get it through).
— Sylvie Wrath (@chronikerdelta) June 21, 2021
So we have to go through extra steps for the same shit 🙃 pic.twitter.com/dcZyhK8H2O
However, things like ‘Go Palestine!’ did work.
At least this works :) pic.twitter.com/GDy5QLISAg
— Cyberrb25 🏠✊🏿✊✊🏽🔻 (@cyberrb25) June 21, 2021
A glitch in the system appears to occur when the first letter in each word of a certain phrase is capitalised. For instance ‘White Lives Matter’ wasn’t accepted but ‘White lives matter’ was. Yet with that in mind ‘Black lives matter’ was still banned.
In a statement given to Newsweek, the Coca-Cola company said: “We’re continuously refining and improving our Share A Coke personalization tool to ensure it is used only for its intended purpose – for Coca-Cola fans to celebrate with one another and make connections.
“We add terms and phrases if we feel they are consistent with that intent.”
