Coca-Cola campaign duped by Hitler bot


Coca-Cola did it's best to put a genuinely happy thing out on the internet, unfortunately for them, they didn't count on the way the internet will always want to mess with anything good.

The company launched its "Make It Happy" campaign on Twitter, that aimed to take tweets and make them into something adorable.

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If a user marked a negative tweet with #makeithappy, Coca-Cola's bot would form the words into a cute picture, such as a cat or a drum kit.

Of course, this was only going to last until pranksters figured out a way to mess with the unsuspecting bot.

The pranksters this time around came from Gawker, who created the twitter handle @MeinCoke, that tweeted out portions of Mein Kampf.

The idea came to them after they noticed Coke's bot had retweeted a white supremacist's slogan, "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children," into a puppy.

Coca-cola's poor bot made it as far as tweeting, "My father was a civil servant who fulfilled his duty very conscientiously" in the shape of a pirate ship before the company halted the process.

Coke suspended the whole campaign Wednesday, stating, "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."

It continued, "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."

In response, Gawker's Max Read wrote in a blog, "It's true — we asked Coca-Cola to tweet about its concern for the continuing existence of the white race. But this is not particularly different from asking for a retweet from a brand or a celebrity. If we asked Coca-Cola to retweet, for example, the first four paragraphs of Hitler's autobiography, Mein Kampf, would it? As it turns out, yes."

Coca-Cola spokeswoman Lauren Thompson stated in an e-mail that, "It's unfortunate Gawker made it a mission to break the system, and the content they used to do it is appalling. All of this reinforces the need for a change online."

Their communication guru Jim Joseph commented that, Gawker's prank "just proved the brand's point."

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