Twitter fixes bug banning accounts just for tweeting the word Memphis

Twitter has issued a fix for a bizarre bug that was banning accounts that tweeted the word ‘Memphis’, with all affected users now seeing their accounts restored.

On March 14, several hours after this highly unusual glitch flared up, Twitter issued a statement confirming that a fix had been put in place which should stop accounts from getting banned just for tweeting the word ‘memphis.’

“A number of accounts that tweeted the world ‘Memphis’ were temporarily limited due to a bug,” the social platform wrote. “It’s been fixed and the accounts have now been restored. We’re sorry this happened.”

The bug cropped up on March 14, as many European football fans used the example of Memphis Depay – the Dutch striker for Lyon in Ligue 1 – tweeting things like ‘What is Depay’s first name?’

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Others expanded it, asking for the name of the city, Memphis, in an attempt to bamboozle people further and expand the joke.

As a result, anyone who replied with ‘memphis’ in lowercase, rather than ‘Memphis’ or even ‘MEMPHIS’ would see their tweet quickly deleted for violating Twitter rules, as strange as that may be.

Multiple users confirmed that they’d landed a 12-hour suspension from Twitter for tweeting the term.

In the suspension notice, Twitter stated that tweets using the word are “violating our rules against posting private information.” This type of restriction is typically reserved for doxxing someone, strangely enough.

https://twitter.com/danmc7373/status/1371120356040269826

While this has now all been resolved, Twitter did not go into specifics about what exactly led to this sort of bug taking hold of their platform for pretty much a whole day.

Either way, despite this announcement, we’d recommend users continue to be cautious with tweeting, in the off chance that the bug returns again.