You could tweet all you wanted about Beale Street, where the blues were born. No problem if you debated the merits of dry rub versus wet sauce for Tennessee barbecue, in 280 characters or less. But for several hours Sunday, simply tweeting the word “Memphis” would get your Twitter account locked along with a vague notification alleging you’d violated platform policy. Naturally, some Twitter users suspected a conspiracy was afoot. Others tweeted it themselves to see if uttering the ancient name had really become a bannable offense — and indeed, it had.
(a) Yes, this is a thing, and (b) I now have Paul Simon’s ‘Graceland’ stuck in my head because of this https://t.co/3GEgicDM1y
— Kevin Sonney (@ksonney) March 14, 2021
A French professional soccer team, Olympique Lyonnais, faced another problem — one of their players is named Memphis Depay.
Hey, @Twitter — can we talk about him yet? 😄 pic.twitter.com/nVn3nY9zBb
— Olympique Lyonnais 🇬🇧🇺🇸 (@OL_English) March 14, 2021
Twitter acknowledged the issue as a “bug” and said it had been resolved by the evening, but stopped short of explaining how or why the issue arose.
A number of accounts that Tweeted the word “Memphis” were temporarily limited due to a bug. It’s been fixed and the accounts have now been restored. We’re sorry this happened.
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) March 14, 2021