A new online tool by Coca-Cola allowing customers to personalise their bottle labels has come under fire after it was discovered the filter blocking 'offensive' names or phrases allows the word "Israel", but not "Palestine" - and blocks several common Muslim names.
Dutch-Egyptian video game developer and founder of GameDev, Rami Ismail, brought the issue to light on Twitter, revealing that when he had tried to personalise a bottle with the term "Palestine", he was greeted with an error message.
"Coca-Cola thinks Palestine is offensive," he wrote.
"Enter Israel, [you] get no error because Coca-Cola thinks Israel is not offensive.
"What's up Coca-Cola?"
Newshub attempted the same personalisation. An attempt to enter 'Palestine' or 'Free Palestine' greeted us with the error message: "Oops! Looks like the name you requested is not an approved one".
"Names may not be approved if they're potentially offensive to other people, trademarked, or celebrity names."
Ismail noted in a follow-up tweet the names Osama and Mohammed - the latter currently the third-most common name in the world - were also prohibited.
His tweets prompted others to try their own combinations. Laura Kate Dale found the website also blocks the term 'Black Lives Matter', but allows 'Blue Lives Matter' and 'Nazis'.
One Twitter user found an amusing workaround with the term 'Go Palestine!' - complete with an exclamation mark - making it through the filter.
"To say that Coke f**ked this one up is the understatement of the century. I kept going for a few minutes, and there are a lot more offensive ones that went through fine," wrote Nick McCormick.
"Real glad they covered their bases with Palestine and common Muslim names though."
Newshub tested several phrases. While 'Nazi's' and 'Nazi Germany' are both allowed, 'Jews' is prohibited.
'White Pride' and 'Proud Boys' also made it through the filter.
'Trans Rights' was allowed, but the words 'transgender', 'gays' and 'lesbians' were not.
While Coca-Cola hasn't responded publicly to the tweets, it encourages users of the website to contact its customer service team if they believe any of their filter settings have been made in error.
"Otherwise, please try again, keep it fun and in the spirit of sharing!" the site reads.
