NYPD’s hashtag promotion goes awry
The New York Police Department asked Twitter followers to post photos of themselves with officers and tag them #myNYPD. What they got was images of police behaving aggressively.
The New York Police Department learned a hard lesson Tuesday, one that quite a few organizations have learned over the past few years: If you create a Twitter hashtag, people will make it into whatever they want.
This is the tweet that kicked off the fiasco:
Do you have a photo w/ a member of the NYPD? Tweet us & tag it #myNYPD. It may be featured on our Facebook. pic.twitter.com/mE2c3oSmm6
— NYPD NEWS (@NYPDnews) April 22, 2014
The near-immediate response was not Twitter followers posting photos of themselves posing with police officers and smiling. Instead, a huge number of the photos people tweeted using the hashtag looked a lot like this:
The #NYPD will also help you de-tangle your hair. #myNYPD pic.twitter.com/nrngQ1bOWv
— Cocky McSwagsalot (@MoreAndAgain) April 22, 2014
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