Warp, a young payroll startup in New York, is in the spotlight following controversial posts from an account tied to the company.

On Thursday, an account posting under the name Vittorio wrote on X, “i like White people more, they do more, they are better for the roles i need to climb the kardashev scale i’ll let blacks run and play basketball.”

The account profile included a badge indicating “Vittorio” was affiliated with Warp, whose software focuses on automating state-by-state tax compliance and was part of the winter 2023 cohort at incubator Y Combinator. The badge is something that X (formerly Twitter) created as part of the X for Business program in 2022 and is usually given to employees, but Warp appears to have distributed it more broadly as part of an unconventional marketing strategy.

Indeed, when an outcry invariably ensured, it focused not just on “Vittorio,” but on Warp, as well, which later disavowed his post as “wrong,” adding, “We believe excellence can come from anywhere.”

The company added that Vittorio was “never a Warp employee” and said it had removed his affiliate badge.

Vittorio’s post and account have since been deleted. Warp also said it was “cutting down on affiliate badges more broadly, keeping it to a smaller group of people that we personally know.”

The company did not immediately respond to a TechCrunch email asking for more details about its relationship with affiliates, some of which defended that original post. (One, associated with “Pico Paco,” said “vittorio did nothing wrong” and that this was just a “pr crisis,” before appearing to also lose its affiliate badge.)

Earlier this week, writer Gergely Orosz complained that his entire X feed had become full of blue checkmarked accounts affiliated with Warp “posting what feels like ‘engagement bait’” — not just self-consciously edgy political opinions but also copycat posts seemingly designed to go viral.

Orosz speculated that Warp was pursuing a new kind of marketing strategy: “Give this affiliate badge (that most companies would use for eg employees) to ‘hip’ accounts who then draw attention to Warp and also promote it.”

In a now-deleted post, Warp CEO Ayush Sharma wrote that “freedom of speech is essential,” and that Warp is “comfortable with taking risks while also being open to feedback.”

When another poster suggested this means Warp is comfortable with racism, Sharma replied, “no, talking mainly about all the folks who are like ‘why do you give out warp badge to ppl’ – we are okay with trying/experimenting with all this, and as I said, always open to feedback.”