Be Careful What You Tweet About Stray
Twitter’s bots might have a problem with the cat game.
Stray is everywhere. It turns out the internet, which is chock full of cat memes, pictures, and videos, is quite fond of the game in which players explore a sci-fi city as a ginger tabby. Just be careful what you tweet about your feline adventures—it might get you banned from Twitter.
At least that’s what happened to Fanbyte news editor Imran Khan when he tweeted a clip from Stray. Khan says Twitter immediately banned him for “Violating our rules against posting or sharing privately produced/distributed intimate media of someone without their express consent.”
This is the offending tweet:
It’s not clear how that clip violated a rule meant to combat revenge porn. A clip from a game probably doesn’t count as being “privately produced.” It’s clearly not intimate media, and unless Stray is even better than people say it is, there’s no way for the cat to offer “express content.”
Someone at Twitter seems to agree. Khan was only banned for a day-much less than one would expect to be banned for posting revenge porn-and the controversial tweet was restored. Twitter still hasn’t offered an explanation for why Khan was banned in the first place, however.
This seems like the epitome of inconsequential problems. Khan was banned from Twitter for a day; some people would see that as a reward instead of a punishment. But the incident highlights just how difficult it can be to use bots to moderate social platforms at scale.
Originally published at https://www.pcmag.com.
