That seems over-charitable to me. It's a very specific change and the article implies that it was intentional

>US footballer told CNN on Sunday that it wanted to change the official flag for 24 hours to show “support for the women in Iran fighting for basic human rights” but always planned to go back to the original flag.

Iran’s true flag is perfectly easy to see on Twitter, removing words from it is actually harder because people familiar with the flag will be confused.

I don’t think the editing was malicious, just stupid.

The US flag has too many stars in it - hurts my eyes - let's make it one big star.