Post by UrbaneVirtuoso on Feb 6, 2015 15:09:42 GMT -5
In recent news, Coca-cola setup a twitter bot named #makeithappy, whose purpose was for people to retweet negative comments online and have them reframed as part of ASCII art -- thus defusing them.
One company had an issue with this; Gawker media.
So? They produced a counter bot to tweet out Mein Kampf to Coca-cola's bot and gleed at said thing retweeting their nationalist propaganda, setting up articles to brag about it in a fashion resembling /b/.
Another victory for journalism and completely missing the point. Read more about it, together with Coca-cola's complete statement here.
One company had an issue with this; Gawker media.
So? They produced a counter bot to tweet out Mein Kampf to Coca-cola's bot and gleed at said thing retweeting their nationalist propaganda, setting up articles to brag about it in a fashion resembling /b/.
UPDATE: In the wake of its republication of Mein Kampf, Coca-Cola has suspended the "Make It Happy" tweet campaign. All Mein Kampf tweets have been removed and the @cocacola handle is no longer responding to #MakeItHappy tweets with ASCII art, or at all, really. The company provided AdWeek with the following statement:
While Gawker strenuously disagrees with Coke's own clearly stated desire to "secure the existence of our people and a future for White Children," we are even more disappointed to learn that the corporation does not have the strength of its own white nationalist convictions. Happiness has been destroyed, for now.
"The #MakeItHappy message is simple: The Internet is what we make it, and we hoped to inspire people to make it a more positive place. It's unfortunate that Gawker is trying to turn this campaign into something that it isn't. Building a bot that attempts to spread hate through #MakeItHappy is a perfect example of the pervasive online negativity Coca-Cola wanted to address with this campaign."
While Gawker strenuously disagrees with Coke's own clearly stated desire to "secure the existence of our people and a future for White Children," we are even more disappointed to learn that the corporation does not have the strength of its own white nationalist convictions. Happiness has been destroyed, for now.
Another victory for journalism and completely missing the point. Read more about it, together with Coca-cola's complete statement here.