From Gal Gadot to Oprah: Twitter’s latest change ends the fun of celebs embarrassing brands

Elon Musk has called time on various “microservices” that the new owner describes as “bloatware”, claiming that “less than 20 per cent are actually needed for Twitter to work.”

One casualty of this is the infamous “via” text that appears underneath tweets and displays which device they originated from.

As Musk says, there are very good reasons to get rid of this (“waste of screen space & compute” he tweeted), and it’s unlikely to impact the way most people use Twitter. “Literally no one even knows why” the company introduced the tag in the first place, Musk claims.

But it does have one disappointing side effect: it ends the time-honoured tradition of celebrities being called out for endorsing Android products via their iPhones. This has been an enjoyable pastime for Twitter sleuths for more than a decade, and sadly it looks like the evidence for future gotchas simply won’t exist.

To mourn its passing, here are a few memorable incidents where celebrities and brands ended up embarrassed by the tell-tale Twitter footprint.

Alicia Keys and the iPhone hack

Remember BlackBerry? Desperately trying to stay relevant in the dying days of its first incarnation, it made the curious decision to hire the singer Alicia Keys as its global creative director.

Despite weirdly telling the world that she and the BlackBerry 10 were now “exclusively dating”, within days, some Drake lyrics appeared on her Twitter account with the phrase “via Twitter for iPhone”.

It was deleted rather quickly, and replaced with the claim that this was the work of tricksy hackers, rather than evidence that she wasn’t the BlackBerry megafan she claimed to be.

Gal Gadot’s Huawei advert

A similar incident happened to Huawei, which enlisted Wonder Woman star Gal Godot as its US brand ambassador in 2018. It wasn’t great timing for the gig, seeing as it came a year before Huawei became the focus of a trade embargo across the Atlantic.

This made Godot’s tweet promoting the Huawei Mate 10 Pro via Twitter for iPhone pretty insignificant, if somewhat embarrassing, in the greater scheme of things.

For her part, Godot denied this was a sign of hypocrisy, blaming the errant post on her social-media team. “I love my Huawei P20 and Mate 10 Pro,” she told CNET. “They are lifelines wherever I am in the world.”

Oprah Winfrey’s #FavoriteThings slip

The first big brand slip occurred all the way back in 2012, however, via the official Twitter account of none other than Oprah Winfrey.

“Gotta say love that SURFACE!” she tweeted, referring to Microsoft’s 2-in-1 tablet/laptop hybrid. “Have bought 12 already for Christmas gifts,” she continued with the #FavoriteThings hashtag, accompanied by a “via Twitter for iPad” stamp.

In Winfrey’s defence, at the time of tweeting, there wasn’t an official Twitter app for Windows and the iPad had made her list of “Ultimate Favorite Things” two years earlier. “I really think it’s the best invention of the century so far,” she argued.

Smartphone makers not using their own products

It’s not just celebrities (or, plausibly, their social-media teams) reverting to iPhone that brands have to worry about. Several official tweets from phone makers have carried the familiar “via Twitter for iPhone” button, too.

The most memorable of these came from Huawei on New Year’s Eve in 2018. “Our resolution this new year is to give you more reasons to connect to those you care about,” the message read with a clear “via Twitter for iPhone” stamp.

While the message was innocuous, the reaction was anything but, with the employees responsible reportedly demoted with a pay cut for causing “damage to the Huawei brand.”

Samsung has slipped up this way, too, managing to promote its 2021 Samsung Unpacked event via an iPhone:

…as has Google…

…and BlackBerry, once upon a time.

…but someone at Apple backs Android

While the gotchas are almost always “Twitter for iPhone” (in part due to the iPhone’s popularity among celebrities, but also because the phrase “Twitter for Android” hides a lot more handsets), Google’s operating system has at least one fan behind enemy lines:

Whoever it is could still be enjoying Apple Music, mind: to paraphrase Apple, there’s an Android app for that.