What is the cause of the bug that the account is frozen just by tweeting 'Memphis' on Twitter?

by GotCredit

On March 14, 2021, users who posted tweets containing the city name 'Memphis' in Tennessee, USA were frozen all at once. On March 15th, Twitter explained that the account restrictions were due to a bug, and announced that it had fixed the bug and lifted the restrictions.

Twitter'Memphis' bug sees accounts flagged | The Independent
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/twitter-accounts-ban-memphis-b1817064.html

On March 14th, we reported that several Twitter users received a notification from Twitter that they would limit their accounts for 12 hours. According to the British news site The Independent, the accounts that were subject to the freeze were concentrated on the accounts immediately after mentioning Dutch soccer player Memphis Depay. When you tweet, it will be frozen automatically. '

In response to this problem, the official Twitter account of Olympique Lyonnais , the French soccer team to which Mr. Depay belongs, tweeted with a picture of Mr. Depay, 'Hey Twitter, can I talk about him soon?' I'm posting.

Hey, @Twitter --can we talk about him yet? ???? pic.twitter.com/nVn3nY9zBb

— Olympique Lyonnais ???????????????? (@OL_English) March 14, 2021

On March 15th, Twitter said, 'Many accounts that tweeted the word'Memphis'were temporarily restricted due to a bug. This bug has been fixed and the accounts have been restored. I apologize for the inconvenience. ' I apologized for the occurrence of the problem.

A number of accounts that Tweeted the word “Memphis” were temporarily limited due to a bug. It's been fixed and the accounts have now been restored. We're sorry this happened.

— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) March 14, 2021

It is unknown at the time of writing the article why the account was frozen just by tweeting the word 'Memphis', but it is pointed out that there may have been a mistake in the setting aimed at protecting personal information. .. In a screenshot shared by Twitter user Ian Keslar, who was the victim of the bug, Twitter warns that his tweet 'Memphis' is a breach of personal information.

If you tweet the word mëmphis (without the accented “e”) your account will be locked for 12 hours lmfao pic.twitter.com/0ha7UGee8o

— Ian Keslar (@ IanKeslar1) March 14, 2021

SwiftOnSecurity, a Twitter account that provides security information, says, 'When a Twitter staff member tries to block an address, a special character that cannot be represented by a normal character string is represented by a specified special character sequence. Maybe only'Memphis'was blocked because of the escape sequence, or because only part of the multi-line address was copied and pasted. ' ..

What's possible is a Twitter staffer tried to block a street address, but the postal syntax acted as an escape sequence, or the original was multi-line and they only pasted the city.
???? pic.twitter.com/LazPtvCR0f

— SwiftOnSecurity (@SwiftOnSecurity) March 14, 2021