Cineplex Australia Pulls Uncensored Twitter Feed After Embarrassing, Foul-Mouthed Tweets

A movie theater chain is in hot water after an incident with an uncensored Twitter feed on their website. This is a perfect case study for businesses considering integrating Twitter into their websites, complete with a big flashing "Warning" sign. The Australian outlet The Herald Sun reports that Cineplex Australia - a chain of movie theaters across Brisbane - had a Twitter feed embedded into its website that pulled tweets about current movies. Sounds great... except that the feed was uncensored. Several members of the public complained about the feed after tweets containing mentions of bestiality and curse words began appearing next to the movies they were looking up. Apparently, tweets like "Shailene Woodley's cleavage deserves an Oscar nod for their work in The Descendants" and "Went to see The Descendants ... George Clooney is so f----ing hot" were popping up on their website, thanks to the feed. Cineplex Australia's owner Leo Catalano removed the Twitter feed on Friday in response to complaints from the public, saying that those tweets had no place on a family-friendly website. Adding a Twitter feed to a website to give some context to current movies sounds like a good idea on the surface, but by integrating an unfiltered feed, Cineplex Australia opened itself up to vulgarities, oddities, and all of the unfiltered thoughts that seem to make their way onto Twitter. They likely set up a search for "The Descendants" and other movies they're airing, but neglected to filter out certain words. Of course, you can't capture everything, but you can cover some pretty major bases by including common curse words and slang to be filtered out. Don't shy away from adding a Twitter feed of your business' account, your @mentions or a search query to your website. Just learn a lesson from Cineplex Australia, and don't leave the judgement of which tweets are displayed up to the discretion of Joe Twitter - your customers probably won't like everything they see. (Modified top image: dezignor via Shutterstock)

Social Pro Daily

Cineplex Australia Pulls Uncensored Twitter Feed After Embarrassing, Foul-Mouthed Tweets

Lauren Dugan

About

Subscriptions

Events

Publications

WORK SMARTER - LEARN, GROW AND BE INSPIRED.

Subscribe today!

Lauren Dugan