I've searched my hardest, no luck in browser history too. Please help me find it! I really thought saved a link, but I didn't.
And for this post to have meaningful impact for others, I'm curious:
What do people here think about public apologies, especially corporate ones? Whereas it does depend on a case and how carefully crafted it is, but some things should be generalizable, right?
It sounds like you're seeking to have somebody reaffirm for you that you were right all along and you don't need to change anything. The is that apologies, by themselves, don't mean anything, and of course they don't work.
Because the goal of "work" is what's messed up -- putting in the minimal effort to avoid a problem and keep doing what you were doing.
The real questions are harder. What went wrong? Why? Who has a problem? What can I do to actually fix the issue? Even if you don't perceive it as being your issue.
Because that's a lot of the core here: people have a problem and they resent that you get to completely disconnect and make it all about them. Public apologies come into play when people step into it and want to step back out -- which they often can't do, because they can't give up being black/female/trans/whatever.
And that's not your fault, and your faux pas didn't make it substantially worse in and of itself. But if you're hoping that you can get out of it as easily as you got into it... that's where you're really stepping in it.
Trying to "generalize" is exactly the opposite of what you need to be doing at that point. There are no magic words, because words don't make the real problem go away.
There won't be an easy way out -- pretty much by design. I certainly can't give you a formula for it. Probably "ignore it and wait for it to go away" is the most likely route, since in the end you probably can wait it out. But if you ponder why that is the real reason they're angry, you might choose a different, more difficult path. Which isn't at all about the apology -- though it probably incorporates that too.
Tada, you've successfully beat the zealous Twitter mob that is only mad because they have nothing else to do with their life.