Uber excuses after a super racist tweet

Uber is retreating rapidly today after an extremely racist tweet from his support account shocked the Internet. Of course, as it is the Internet, it is likely that a troll has been involved in this sordid mess.

"We would sincerely apologize for the offensive tweet sent earlier," reads in the apology of the dawn tweet of the Uber support team. "We are investigating what happened to make sure it does not happen again."

And what was the offensive tweet in question? It has since been deleted, but not before its screen capture in eternity.

Apparently, responding to a customer complaint about a bad driver, the company responded that she was sorry, then called the alleged customer a vile racist insult.

We contacted Uber to try to determine how such a situation might occur, but we received no response at the time of going to press. One possibility, however, is that the account in question followed Uber in the hope of a bot response.

This seems all the more likely when you look at the @realTheeCheney account, which consists mainly of MAGA monitoring and screenshots of other Twitter users turning brand accounts into tweet of racist responses. . For example, if the @realTheeCheney account had a full name with the link, it changed it after receiving Uber's reply, a bot reply from @Uber_Support citing the full name could then read as the screenshot tweet deleted above.

Even if this is the case, Uber should pay more attention to its automated systems – a basic filter would have been very useful in this situation. Excuses do not mean much if the underlying problem remains unanswered.

UPDATE: April 29, 2019, 9:02 AM: Mashable can confirm that the Twitter user posing as an Uber client has actually actually temporarily set his Twitter display name on a racist expression.

"We apologize for this offensive tweet and are disappointed that our process to prevent such an event from happening is not effective here," said an Uber spokesperson by email. "Our support team is taking additional steps to prevent this from happening again."

Mashable can also confirm that the systems already in place at Uber should have prevented this and that the company is investigating the problems that occurred during this specific incident.