Twitter apologises after using fake tweets to promote itself

Twitter has found itself in hot water, having to apologise for attributing fake tweets to real users while promoting its own advertising product.

Twitter posted on its blog earlier this week about the new "Amplify" product for brands and advertisers, which will allow them to retweet TV ads. Twitter's blog post was shared by @Twittterads.

Along with this blog, however, it also posted a mock-up of the new advertising dashboard with tweets from users lauding TV commercials.

And while the tweets were fake themselves, the shocking element is that the three users used in the mock-ups are very real, and very unhappy.

Too late to apologise?

One of the fake tweets read: "What is the song in the new @barristabar commercial? I love it!!"

Attributed to @Neil_Gottlieb, he told blog site SF Gate, "It's disturbing and has no place. To use my image and fake a tweet is wrong and needs to be addressed."

In response, Twitter removed their profiles from the tweets, instead attributing them to Twitter employees and added an apology to its blog post:

"An earlier version of this blog post included an image with mock Tweets from real users of our platform. This was not OK. Once we became aware of this mistake we took it down immediately. We deeply apologize to the three users included in the earlier images."

They also tweeted an apology: "Hey @Neil_Gottlieb, @WilliamMazeo, @subhash_tewari - so sorry about the confusion earlier today. We're fixing the problem now."

But Gottlieb remains unimpressed and told SFGate that he will be consulting an attorney.

Via: SFGate