SAN FRANCISCO, CA—Oops! Twitter just accidentally banned the official account of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez while trying to crack down on parody accounts of the controversial congresswoman.
The social network had banned several popular parody accounts of the congresswoman. The company then deployed an algorithm to identify and automatically ban accounts that satirized Ocasio-Cortez or her allies in Congress. Unfortunately, the algorithm got “a little too aggressive,” and banned Ocasio-Cortez herself.
“It seems that our algorithm identified everything she posted as a really clever parody of the left,” a spokesperson said. “The constant faux pas, the self-defeating arguments, the seemingly satirical take on far-left positions—it all added up to the account looking very much like satire. Frankly, her posts were outdoing the satire accounts almost every day.”
“I mean, the woman didn’t know what a garbage disposal was, for crying out loud,” he added. “How are you supposed to train an algorithm to take that seriously?”
At publishing time, President Trump’s account had also been suspended as parody.
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