Riot's automated filters accidentally censor Muslim minority

Riot Games has corrected an error in its filtering systems that banned the name of a Muslim ethnic minority group.

A Reddit thread highlighted that users were banned from saying 'Uyghur' in the League of Legends client.

Uyghurs are Muslims mostly based in China's Xinjiang province, which human rights groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch report have been abused by the Chinese government, the BBC reports.

There are reports that people have been detained in mass imprisonment camps, and forced to recite Communist Party slogans and swear loyalty to President Xi Jinping.

Riot Games' communications boss Ryan Rigney replied to the Reddit thread, assuring he would look into this and acknowledging that, "sometimes our system bans really weird words for no good reason."

"That said it would be complete bullshit to intentionally ban the name of any ethnic group," he continued.

He also shared this response via Twitter, again stressing that the text filtering system was "banning words it shouldn't."

Rigney reported back a few hours later, confirming the issue had been fixed "in all Riot Regions."

"We'll be spending the next few weeks triaging with our global teams to review our 'disallowed words/phrases' lists and update accordingly."

Responding to Twitter users, Rigney also acknowledged: "Yeah, our automated system sucks."

The BBC reports users initially raised the issue of the official League of Legends forums but the complaints were ignored because the site's rules state that discussions about "ethnicity and race" are banned.

A similar thing appears to have happened on the original Reddit threat, with the opening post removed because "claims about or against distinct entities must have sources or proof supporting them and present them in an unbiased manner."