Twitter customers who applied the word “Memphis” discovered themselves temporarily locked out of their accounts at the weekend for the reason that of a bizarre bug.
Several customers shared screenshots displaying messages from Twitter saying their account was becoming restricted for violating the platform’s guidelines, immediately after they had tweeted a message which incorporated the word “Memphis.”
Twitter late Sunday acknowledged the error and stated it had been fixed.
Reports of the bug emerged immediately after some soccer fans noticed that posts mentioning Olympique Lyonnais player Memphis Depay have been becoming blocked.
The French soccer club tweeted a image of their Dutch forward with the message: “Hey, @Twitter — can we talk about him yet?”
Others joined in with jokes about the apparent taboo.
“When bots flood our comments with ‘say the m word’,” NBA group the Memphis Grizzlies tweeted with a video of a player blocking a shot.
Some customers expressed mock concern about the taboo covering the Tennessee property of rock’n’roll exactly where Elvis Presley grew up.
Others referenced the Monty Python comedy “Life of Brian,” with lawyer George Conway, a vocal Donald Trump critic, linking to the scene exactly where a man is about to be stoned for saying the word “Jehovah.”
“A number of accounts that Tweeted the word ‘Memphis’ were temporarily limited due to a bug,” Twitter Support stated on Sunday.
“It’s been fixed and the accounts have now been restored. We’re sorry this happened.”
Some customers noted that Twitter was in a position to ban a distinct term, albeit inadvertently, and known as for it to greater address abuse on the platform.
“Hello Twitter, Glad you got that fixed. Now ban the nazis, please,” one user tweeted.