Pudgy Penguins will apologize for a racist X-post it posted last week in response to a complaint from the NFT Manchester City, the project’s $5.3 billion soccer partner.
According to a series of screenshots, Manchester City contacted Pudgy Penguins after suggesting via X that the social media platform’s crackdown on reply spam and “AI slop” “could actually have a significant effect on the Indian economy.”
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The message appeared to rely on the xenophobic stereotype that Indians are often behind bot or spam accounts related to the so-called ‘InfoFi’ sector.
Following Manchester City’s complaint, Pudgy Penguins “acknowledged that the tweet was inappropriate and does not reflect the company values.”
The Pudgy Penguins press office said it planned to contact the X user who flagged the post and “express their apologies for this.” It added that it had removed the post from its channels.
Users are ‘incredibly ashamed’ of Pudgy CEO Lucas Netz
The X-user in question, ‘Satvik’, reported the message to Manchester City after other users tried to downplay it. Satvik said Pudgy Penguins CEO Lucas Netz “should be”is incredibly ashamed” from his team for the post.
The account later added, “I’m fucking tired of how normalized racism against Indians has become on this platform. Every day we face hurtful comments for simply existing online.”
Crypto founder Dan Sickles took a screenshot of the post and later said he wants to hear what company policies Netz will implement “to prevent incidents like this from happening again, and to condemn xenophobia and racism in general.”
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Immediately after the post was posted, the account posted a smug response claiming it was just “farming yaps” (social media gaming for profit).
Pudgy Penguins started out selling NFTs of cartoon penguins, but to encourage more people outside of crypto to invest, it has expanded into markets such as children’s books, mobile games, designer collectibles and football.
Often the messages clash with the kid-friendly branding and instead focus on trending topics in the financial sector and tech industry.
Netz and Pudgy Penguins have not publicly apologized for the post at the time of writing.
Protos has reached out to Pudgy Penguins for comment and will update this post if we hear back.