The New England Patriots issued a public apology after supposedly innocuous automated tweets were sent out in celebration of the team passing a million Twitter followers.
The team invited users to retweet a celebratory message – “Thanks for helping us become the first NFL team with 1 million followers! #1MillionPatriots” – in order to generate a tweet showing a team jersey featuring the re-tweeter’s Twitter handle.
Alas, one account which retweeted the Patriots’ message had an unfortunate name:
On Thursday, the Patriots deleted the offending tweet and – via Twitter – issued the following apology: “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 are not the first NFL team to run into trouble over racism on Twitter, although the last to do so was, arguably, at fault for rather more than a failure to monitor its followers list.
In May, as part of an ongoing, vituperative and increasingly expensive campaign against those who say their name is derogatory to native Americans – including, in this instance, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada – Washington sought to create a supportive meme through the hashtag “#RedskinsPride”.
A tweet from Washington’s official Twitter account said: “Tweet @SenatorReid to show your #RedskinsPride and tell him what the team means to you.”
Though some tweets were indeed supportive, in general the idea backfired rather spectacularly:
Sitting Bull-Tatanka Iyotake was called #redskin devil 4 resisting colonization. No #redskinspride here @SenatorReid pic.twitter.com/vKZnemeKCA
— Dani (@xodanix3) May 29, 2014
In the words of the Spanish philosopher, novelist and poet George Santayana, “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. The Patriots and other NFL teams with lightly supervised social-media departments may therefore heed what one Twitter user had to say in May:
Whom the gods would destroy they first put in charge of a corporate twitter account. #RedskinsPride
— Jeff Tiedrich (@jefftiedrich) May 29, 2014
