I kind of read the "... but it worked in China soooo...." bit of the announcement as somewhere behind a kind of sad sigh and an angry scowl. Maybe Mandela got it wrong, maybe a society should be judged by how it treats its chatbots?
> Unfortunately, in the first 24 hours of coming online, a coordinated attack by a subset of people exploited a vulnerability in Tay.
I think it just didn't get a coordinated attack like this. I'd guess this type of attack needs to happen close to launch to be a high percentage of it's interactions to influence it so strongly.
Where exactly is "here" though? Twitter is global remember? Anyone in the world, including Zambia where I am could have interacted with Tay. That's a very different proposition to "China".
Almost only Chinese people speak Chinese. However, many people speak English (I come from Spain, for example), so in this case you can hardly pin it on a single culture.
I think in this case it has to do more with 4chan's culture than a regional culture.
That wouldn't be an issue for just offending people, but only if it became political. Don't forget the US also has government control and censorship - try posting child porn on Twitter and see if the government leaves you alone.