The Facebook Messenger team promoted its new HBOWestworld Messenger account on Twitter by mistakenly linking to a Kentucky woman named Lisa McKinley West who lives in Florence. In its tweet, the Messenger team wrote that fans could chat with the new host of the Westworld Messenger experience, a bot named Tes. Unfortunately, it was Lisa—not Tes—who was linked in the tweet, most likely because her account was named messenger.com/t/westworld.
Twitter user Matt Navarra pointed out the error in a tweet, wondering if poor Lisa would be flooded with messages from Westworld fans. “Facebook Messenger about to destroy the inbox of a random women [sic] from Kentucky?” Navarra wrote. “They sent this tweet about Westworld, but the link takes you to a regular FB user called Lisa… Not a Westworld bot?!”
Fortunately, the Facebook team quickly realized its mistake and removed the tweet before the Kentucky woman’s inbox was filled by strangers. She received only around 20 messages in her inbox, which were filtered as “message requests,” she said. Facebook personally apologized to Lisa for the incident. “Guess that’s what I get for calling my home Westworld lol,” she told TechCrunch.
Facebook corrected the link on Twitter, promoting its new bot with a link to the Westworld HBO Facebook page. “For a short time this morning, a tweet from the Messenger Twitter account incorrectly linked people to message an individual person, instead of the intended bot for Messenger,” the company confirmed in a statement. “As soon as we became aware of the error, we immediately corrected it. We’re very sorry for any trouble or confusion this caused.”
Fans who chat with Tes, the actual Westworld bot, can receive “exclusive updates” about the show.