The Times' latest FSU story was flagged as spam on Twitter

The New York Times published another story detailing how the Florida State football program exercises its influence on the Tallahassee Police Department, most recently turning a hit-and-run into a traffic violation.

The New York Times published another story Friday detailing how Florida State football players have received preferential treatment from the Tallahassee Police Department, most recently with a hit-and-run that turned into two traffic tickets.

Unfortunately for the paper, it appears the always-vigilant Seminoles fans on Twitter may have decided they had had enough reporting of the school's misdeeds and flagged the link as spam en masse, causing the social media site to block it from being shared.

Wow. FSU fans managed to convince Twitter that the NYT hit-and-run story is spam. http://t.co/klUI0GGpJV

— Mike Finger (@mikefinger) November 14, 2014

This is what you see when the link is clicked from a tweet:

Screenshot via Twitter

The Times later clarified that it was unclear why the link was flagged as spam. A spokeswoman from the paper said that a Times link has never before been flagged as spam on the social media service "to the best of our knowledge." Twitter also issued a statement on why the URL was flagged:

In a statement, a Twitter spokesman said that the New York Times link, or URL, “was mistakenly flagged as spam today, by an outside organization that tracks spam sources. We quickly restored access to the URL and apologize for the error.”

A Times editor tweeted his thanks to FSU fans for the exposure to the story.

Thank u #FSUTwitter for increased exposure to story. We now get to write another story about it. Also, #stayclassy http://t.co/Pw2Z6As7Xx

— Justin Sablich (@JustinSablich) November 14, 2014

The Times has previously reported on the school's handling of allegations against Heisman-winning quarterback Jameis Winston, in addition to other instances in which football players actions were not properly investigated.

- Brendan Maloy