A new startup social media network introduced itself to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill campus by faking a shooting alert, which could result in criminal charges.
According to the Huffington Post, Bevii, a brand new social media website, launched by UNC Chapel Hill sophomore Taylor Robinette, announced itself in an email to the school community. The email was a fake emergency alert to a shooting incident near campus.
"At precisely 10:01am yesterday, in broad daylight, shots were fired on Franklin Street. The victim is being described as a blue, outdated social network," the alert read. "The current suspect is Bevii, a mobile, location-based social network only available to select Universities."
Bevii claimed to be sending the email as emergency notification system AlertCarolina. Now the school is investigating the matter to find out if the social media startup fraudulently used AlertCarolina's domain name.
"There have been no charges filed in the investigation into the fraudulent message on Alert Carolina," Jeff McCracken, director of the UNC Department of Public Safety, said Monday. "No further details are available, as the case is currently still under investigation."
However, after the email had already been circulated and outrage from community members swirled, the school sent out a not clarifying a few details. The fake message was sent from AlertCarolina.com and not AlertCarolina.UNC.edu, the real website. The fake email was also meant to redirect its recipients to the business' website and not to an emergency notification center.
Robinette told Mashable the marketing move "was a colossally, epically stupid idea."
UNC has now blocked Bevii's website on school servers and the young social media site, launched Oct. 14, is off to a very bad start in terms of press attention.
The alert was not in any way implying that an actual person was shot, but that Bevii had hypothetically gunned down a "blue, outdated social network," or Facebook. As Valley Wag noted, no students or UNC community members found the gun violence joke to be very tasteful, or even funny at all.