Email from The New York Times meant for 300, sent to 8M

An email asking people to reconsider their cancellation of home delivery from The New York Times accidentally was sent to some eight million people on Wednesday, but was intended to reach only a few hundred.

Twitter lit up on Wednesday afternoon EST over reports from users who received the message but were confused, considering they either didn't cancel their existing subscription or didn't have a plan to begin with. Even a parody account was set up within minutes of the first report.

Robert Christie, a Times spokesman, initially tweeted that the emails appeared to be spam. But minutes later, that was recanted in a tweet from Amy Chozick, a corporate media reporter for the paper .

Her tweet said the emails were, in fact, sent by the newspaper, but they were supposed to only reach about 300 people. Instead, they were errantly delivered to more than eight million.

The paper issued a statement.

"An email was sent earlier today from The New York Times in error," it said. "This email should have been sent to a very small number of subscribers, but instead was sent to a vast distribution list made up of people who had previously provided their email address to The New York Times.  We regret this error and we regret our earlier communication noting that this email was spam."

A screenshot of the email, received by SC Magazine, is below.