UEFA’s automated Tweet replies are going disastrously wrong

The people of Twitter quickly and ruthlessly exploited the idea's obvious flaws.

By Stephen Barry

Today UEFA decided they wanted to interact with excited EURO 2016 fans, just without the hassle of actually interacting with fans.

Thus the automated Twitter reply was born.

A perfect solution? Well…

Hitler wasn’t the only murderous dictator to appear as jokes overran their Twitter feed.

Don't think the people behind @UEFAEURO account really thought this plan through pic.twitter.com/mVkz26asxp

— Daniel McDonnell (@McDonnellDan) December 14, 2015

It's not the only one on the UEFA account (automated) pic.twitter.com/DcJWLweuU7

— Rob Harris (@RobHarris) December 14, 2015

The promotion was either a somewhat misguided or spectacularly successful attempt to drum up attention for the opening of EURO 2016 ticket applications.

You have until January 18 to apply, with prices starting at €25.

Update at 11pm:

UEFA have since apologised for the issues with the fan activation.

We apologise for the offensive and tasteless user names generated by some taking part earlier in a fan activation. This has now closed.

— UEFA EURO (@UEFAEURO) December 14, 2015