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| Version 3 | Version 4 |
|---|---|
| Twitter 'sorry' for suspending Guy Adams as NBC withdraws complaint | Twitter 'sorry' for suspending Guy Adams as NBC withdraws complaint |
| (3 months later) | |
| Twitter on Tuesday reinstated the account of a British journalist it suspended for publishing the email address of an executive at NBC, which had been attracting a significant amount of incoming fire over its Olympics coverage. | Twitter on Tuesday reinstated the account of a British journalist it suspended for publishing the email address of an executive at NBC, which had been attracting a significant amount of incoming fire over its Olympics coverage. |
| The incident has not done Guy Adams of the Independent much harm. Apart perhaps from a little hurt pride, he has returned to the twittersphere with tens of thousands of new followers. | The incident has not done Guy Adams of the Independent much harm. Apart perhaps from a little hurt pride, he has returned to the twittersphere with tens of thousands of new followers. |
| For NBC, it was another blow to its already battered reputation over its coverage of the London Olympic Games. | For NBC, it was another blow to its already battered reputation over its coverage of the London Olympic Games. |
| But Twitter found itself in a deeply unfamiliar situation: as the subject of one of the firestorms of indignation that characterises the platform, but which are usually directed at others. | But Twitter found itself in a deeply unfamiliar situation: as the subject of one of the firestorms of indignation that characterises the platform, but which are usually directed at others. |
| As the dust settled on Wednesday, both organisations sought to extricate themselves from the mess with as much dignity as possible. Twitter acknowledged it had flunked the situation by actively reporting the offending tweet to NBC, with which it had been working in partnership for the Olympics. Alex McGillivray, its general counsel, said in a blog post: | As the dust settled on Wednesday, both organisations sought to extricate themselves from the mess with as much dignity as possible. Twitter acknowledged it had flunked the situation by actively reporting the offending tweet to NBC, with which it had been working in partnership for the Olympics. Alex McGillivray, its general counsel, said in a blog post: |
| We want to apologize for the part of this story that we did mess up. The team working closely with NBC around our Olympics partnership did proactively identify a Tweet that was in violation of the Twitter Rules and encouraged them to file a support ticket with our Trust and Safety team to report the violation, as has now been reported publicly. Our Trust and Safety team did not know that part of the story and acted on the report as they would any other. | We want to apologize for the part of this story that we did mess up. The team working closely with NBC around our Olympics partnership did proactively identify a Tweet that was in violation of the Twitter Rules and encouraged them to file a support ticket with our Trust and Safety team to report the violation, as has now been reported publicly. Our Trust and Safety team did not know that part of the story and acted on the report as they would any other. |
| As I stated earlier, we do not proactively report or remove content on behalf of other users no matter who they are. This behavior is not acceptable and undermines the trust our users have in us. We should not and cannot be in the business of proactively monitoring and flagging content, no matter who the user is – whether a business partner, celebrity or friend. | As I stated earlier, we do not proactively report or remove content on behalf of other users no matter who they are. This behavior is not acceptable and undermines the trust our users have in us. We should not and cannot be in the business of proactively monitoring and flagging content, no matter who the user is – whether a business partner, celebrity or friend. |
NBC, meanwhile, acknowledged that things had got out of hand. A spokesman told the Wall Street Journal: | NBC, meanwhile, acknowledged that things had got out of hand. A spokesman told the Wall Street Journal: |
| Our interest was in protecting our executive, not suspending the user from Twitter. We didn't initially understand the repercussions of our complaint, but now that we do, we have rescinded it. | Our interest was in protecting our executive, not suspending the user from Twitter. We didn't initially understand the repercussions of our complaint, but now that we do, we have rescinded it. |
| The whole affair serves to remind us that Twitter has come a long way in the past few years. | The whole affair serves to remind us that Twitter has come a long way in the past few years. |
| Back in the olden days of 2010, Twitter was the host of another global conversation around a worldwide sporting event: the World Cup. People from 172 countries tweeted in 27 different languages, and the activity sent a new record for buzz on Twitter: 3,051 tweets per second. | Back in the olden days of 2010, Twitter was the host of another global conversation around a worldwide sporting event: the World Cup. People from 172 countries tweeted in 27 different languages, and the activity sent a new record for buzz on Twitter: 3,051 tweets per second. |
| This was all before a handful of redesigns that helped propel Twitter to new heights. But most significantly, it was all before Twitter added analytics, multimedia capabilities and expanded tweets – the kind of things a company would want to provide in order to gather massive amounts of user information. | This was all before a handful of redesigns that helped propel Twitter to new heights. But most significantly, it was all before Twitter added analytics, multimedia capabilities and expanded tweets – the kind of things a company would want to provide in order to gather massive amounts of user information. |
| Now, just a short two years later, Twitter has partnered with NBC for the London 2012 Olympics. The link-up has not gone as well as it might have hoped: its users slammed its newly minted partner for withholding live coverage of some events from American viewers, showcasing culturally tone-deaf journalists filing the complaint that sent Adams to Twitter suspension purgatory for publishing the email address of the NBC executive in charge of the coverage. (Twitter's terms of service ban the publication of "private" email addresses; there's some debate about how private a corporate email address at one of the world's biggest media companies can be.) | Now, just a short two years later, Twitter has partnered with NBC for the London 2012 Olympics. The link-up has not gone as well as it might have hoped: its users slammed its newly minted partner for withholding live coverage of some events from American viewers, showcasing culturally tone-deaf journalists filing the complaint that sent Adams to Twitter suspension purgatory for publishing the email address of the NBC executive in charge of the coverage. (Twitter's terms of service ban the publication of "private" email addresses; there's some debate about how private a corporate email address at one of the world's biggest media companies can be.) |
| Worse still, it was allegedly a Twitter employee who alerted NBC to the offending tweet. | Worse still, it was allegedly a Twitter employee who alerted NBC to the offending tweet. |
| Much has changed since the World Cup. Along the road to London 2012, there were elections, natural disasters and Occupy Wall Street, all events that gave Twitter a sterling reputation as a bastion for free speech and a safe place for people to bash public figures and each other in the semi-anonymous privacy of their homes. And as we were rallying against whatever we wanted, Twitter quietly tweaked its terms of service as the din grew louder – the last revision was in June ago. | Much has changed since the World Cup. Along the road to London 2012, there were elections, natural disasters and Occupy Wall Street, all events that gave Twitter a sterling reputation as a bastion for free speech and a safe place for people to bash public figures and each other in the semi-anonymous privacy of their homes. And as we were rallying against whatever we wanted, Twitter quietly tweaked its terms of service as the din grew louder – the last revision was in June ago. |
| For gathering real-time information, you'd be hard-pressed to find a more valuable tool. But this is a good time to remind ourselves that Twitter is a private company, complete with a massive set of guidelines about how its product is used. | For gathering real-time information, you'd be hard-pressed to find a more valuable tool. But this is a good time to remind ourselves that Twitter is a private company, complete with a massive set of guidelines about how its product is used. |
| Tweeting the email address of a corporate exec who only just spoke on the record about NBC's potential for "enormous contribution to this conversation" on Twitter can be ruled as an abuse worthy of suspension. For a short time, Adams could count himself among the ranks of alleged slanderer Courtney Love and hack-happy Anonymous before having his account restored on Tuesday afternoon. | Tweeting the email address of a corporate exec who only just spoke on the record about NBC's potential for "enormous contribution to this conversation" on Twitter can be ruled as an abuse worthy of suspension. For a short time, Adams could count himself among the ranks of alleged slanderer Courtney Love and hack-happy Anonymous before having his account restored on Tuesday afternoon. |
| Like Facebook or Google, other platforms popularly under the microscope for their evolving (or devolving, depending how you look at it) privacy and use policies, Twitter also has to figure out how to both leverage the flow of free information – and maybe even make some money of of it. | Like Facebook or Google, other platforms popularly under the microscope for their evolving (or devolving, depending how you look at it) privacy and use policies, Twitter also has to figure out how to both leverage the flow of free information – and maybe even make some money of of it. |
| And so it forges partnerships with corporate television networks. And it becomes cagey about sharing our pictures, our words and our activities with other hugely popular platforms – for instance, it'll be interesting to see what comes of its recent breakdown in communication with Instagram, a service in the business of sharing pictures. Sort of like Twitter. | And so it forges partnerships with corporate television networks. And it becomes cagey about sharing our pictures, our words and our activities with other hugely popular platforms – for instance, it'll be interesting to see what comes of its recent breakdown in communication with Instagram, a service in the business of sharing pictures. Sort of like Twitter. |
| Twitter is an invaluable tool, but what it's not is a flag-waving, torch-bearing warrior for free speech – Twitter likes to say that the tweets must flow, but really that just means most of them. | Twitter is an invaluable tool, but what it's not is a flag-waving, torch-bearing warrior for free speech – Twitter likes to say that the tweets must flow, but really that just means most of them. |
| Twitter will defend users if it's a question of having to set a new, uncomfortable precedent for giving up data – legal battles waged on behalf of WikiLeaks and Occupy protesters prove this – but protecting itself when an unwieldy conversation about a network partner swings right out of its grasp is another thing entirely. | Twitter will defend users if it's a question of having to set a new, uncomfortable precedent for giving up data – legal battles waged on behalf of WikiLeaks and Occupy protesters prove this – but protecting itself when an unwieldy conversation about a network partner swings right out of its grasp is another thing entirely. |
| Since 2010, the company's reach has skyrocketed, and many users have assumed that Twitter is a platform where speech of all types is protected, and that information of all sorts is freely circulated. It took an odd circumstance to remind us that it isn't. | Since 2010, the company's reach has skyrocketed, and many users have assumed that Twitter is a platform where speech of all types is protected, and that information of all sorts is freely circulated. It took an odd circumstance to remind us that it isn't. |
| In the end, NBC's big hopes for "enormous contribution" to the Olympics conversation out of a partnership with Twitter came true. The problem – and a rookie mistake, really – was their joined hope to control it. | In the end, NBC's big hopes for "enormous contribution" to the Olympics conversation out of a partnership with Twitter came true. The problem – and a rookie mistake, really – was their joined hope to control it. |
| Comments | |
| 18 comments, displaying first | |
| 31 July 2012 9:25PM | |
| Twitter is getting rather dangerous nowadays and making the news as well as broadcasting it. As much as I do not condone the troll who tweeted Tom Daley, was there really a need to arrest him ? Really ? | |
| Link to this comment: | |
| 31 July 2012 10:53PM | |
| Twitter needs to fix its flagging system. They ban so many people who don't deserve it, that it's not funny. | |
| Link to this comment: | |
| 31 July 2012 10:58PM | |
| SO SAD How NO ONE has the guts to stand up and say "Sod off, I said what I mean, meant what I said, meant what I did!" anymore, always these pithy apologetics, sickening. | |
| Link to this comment: | |
| 31 July 2012 10:59PM | |
| Twitter is for people with no life, like Facebook. Both will be distant fading memories in 7 years or less. Just like that other thing, what was it... MySpace, LOL GOOD BYE! | |
| Link to this comment: | |
| 31 July 2012 11:00PM | |
| Hey Ryan, any examples come to mind? | |
| Link to this comment: | |
| 31 July 2012 11:02PM | |
| Walt -- my first reaction about hearing the Tom Daley troll was arrested was similar to yours, but then I read this guardian article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/jul/31/teenager-arrested-tweets-tom-daley | |
| ---- Later, however, another tweet to Daley read: "i'm going to find you and i'm going to drown you in the pool you cocky twat your a nobody people like you make me sick". | |
| Tweets to other users who criticised his earlier message were spiked with profanity. One read: "i dont give a shit bruv i'm gonna drown him and i'm gonna shoot you he failed why you suporting him you cunt." Another, to a different Twitter user, read: "do you want me to come to your fucking house now with a rope and strangle you with it." ---- | |
| Those are threats and absolutely merit police action. | |
| Link to this comment: | |
| 31 July 2012 11:07PM | |
| Yup, Katie: the one from this story we're all commenting on. | |
| Twitter is also designed such that all it takes is x number of flags from other users for an account to get auto-banned. That's not atypical on the internet, but it's a bigger problem on a platform like Twitter, where all it takes is a few fringe types who disagree with you politically to click those flags, even if you haven't done anything in violation of Twitter's rules. | |
| Twitter should -- in the case of large numbers of flags being issued -- examine the tweets of the person flagged to make sure a violation has taken place, but it doesn't do that. I know of several people locally who have been banned by conservatives, just for saying things those conservatives didn't like to hear, and that's not right. | |
| Link to this comment: | |
| 31 July 2012 11:32PM | |
| yeah i had no idea about the profanity-laced tweets until a few people pointed it out. the original version of this article didn't have them and that's the one i saw: http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2012/jul/31/tom-daley-twitter-abuse-law?CMP=twt_gu | |
| (it's apparently updated now) | |
| Link to this comment: | |
| 31 July 2012 11:35PM | |
| interesting that it's so common. this story in particular hit a fever pitch because everyone who latched on was a journalist, and the story tied into the NBC/Olympics craziness and so on. i didn't know a critical mass of complaint forms could get someone suspended, but as you say it's not surprising. surprised we didn't see this more with occupy ... | |
| Link to this comment: | |
| 1 August 2012 1:49AM | |
| It's worth noting that Twitter continues to defend the notion that a corporate email address is "private" under its terms of use and that Adams did violate its terms of use and that basically the only reason his account is being restored is because NBC withdrew its complaint. What's interesting is the explanation for why Twitter considers a work email "private": | |
| There are many individuals who may use their work email address for a variety of personal reasons -- and they may not. Our Trust and Safety team does not have insight into the use of every user's email address, and we need a policy that we can implement across all of our users in every instance. | |
| So something is private because it can be used to transact private matters? I'm sure NBC's boss has personal matters occur at his office as most people do - it is now illegal to post NBC's corporate address on Twitter? How about his office phone number? Surely he has personal conversations over his office telephone. No tweeting NBC's corporate telephone number anymore? It's ironic that Twitter's counsel cites the need for across-the-board clarity as justification for Twitter's odd insistence that a work email is private. In fact, its rationale makes it even harder to figure out what Twitter considers private. If clarity is what Twitter wants, how about this: personal email address is private and work email address is not? That's not clear enough for Twitter? | |
| Link to this comment: | |
| 1 August 2012 3:26AM | |
| Gary Zenkel's email address can be seen on the web going back as far as 2009. Someone at Twitter needs to learn to use Google. | |
| Link to this comment: | |
| 1 August 2012 9:00AM | |
| Can you link to a few examples or even one, please? This is not a snide keyboard-warrior challenge, I'm genuinely asking because I tried yesterday and could only find day-old examples since the furore kicked off. | |
| Is there a way to limit search results on Google to a specific timeframe? | |
| Link to this comment: | |
| 1 August 2012 10:37AM | |
| Missing coverage from this article is a sample of the British journalist's criticism of NBC's coverage of the Olympics. | |
| Bet the criticism didn't match mine. | |
| NBC, from the OUTSET, made it clear that it didn't understand the Olympic Spirit. During the Opening Ceremonies, while the teams were marching in, the announcers made numerous political attack statements. (In the US the announcers were Brian Costa and Matt Laura; I was sooooo grateful that uberzionist Brian Williams was not there at the Opening Ceremonies). | |
| Give this article a 4.0 | |
| Link to this comment: | |
| 1 August 2012 10:56AM | |
| "We {Twitter} should not and cannot be in the business of proactively monitoring and flagging content..." | |
| ... it is just that we ARE: Click. | |
| Link to this comment: | |
| 1 August 2012 11:42AM | |
| the last revision was in June ago | |
| How long ago was that again, Subs?! | |
| Link to this comment: | |
| 1 August 2012 2:46PM | |
| Hey, and as Adams said, you can just find the e-mail address by spending a few seconds on Google. | |
| Link to this comment: | |
| 1 August 2012 2:47PM | |
| American here. | |
| Link to this comment: | |
| 1 August 2012 11:52PM | |
| "Is there a way to limit search results on Google to a specific timeframe?" | |
| Yes. Down the left hand side of the results are 'More Search Tools" which includes ways to limit the search by time. | |
| Link to this comment: | |
| Comments on this page are now closed. | |
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| Suspended British journalist who criticised NBC's Olympics coverage is restored to Twitter, but the backlash shows the social network's growing pains | |
| Twitter on Tuesday reinstated the account of a British journalist it suspended for publishing the email address of an executive at NBC, which had been attracting a significant amount of incoming fire over its Olympics coverage. | |
| The incident has not done Guy Adams of the Independent much harm. Apart perhaps from a little hurt pride, he has returned to the twittersphere with tens of thousands of new followers. | |
| For NBC, it was another blow to its already battered reputation over its coverage of the London Olympic Games. | |
| But Twitter found itself in a deeply unfamiliar situation: as the subject of one of the firestorms of indignation that characterises the platform, but which are usually directed at others. | |
| As the dust settled on Wednesday, both organisations sought to extricate themselves from the mess with as much dignity as possible. Twitter acknowledged it had flunked the situation by actively reporting the offending tweet to NBC, with which it had been working in partnership for the Olympics. Alex McGillivray, its general counsel, said in a blog post: | |
| We want to apologize for the part of this story that we did mess up. The team working closely with NBC around our Olympics partnership did proactively identify a Tweet that was in violation of the Twitter Rules and encouraged them to file a support ticket with our Trust and Safety team to report the violation, as has now been reported publicly. Our Trust and Safety team did not know that part of the story and acted on the report as they would any other. | |
| As I stated earlier, we do not proactively report or remove content on behalf of other users no matter who they are. This behavior is not acceptable and undermines the trust our users have in us. We should not and cannot be in the business of proactively monitoring and flagging content, no matter who the user is – whether a business partner, celebrity or friend. | |
NBC, meanwhile, acknowledged that things had got out of hand. A spokesman told the Wall Street Journal: | |
| Our interest was in protecting our executive, not suspending the user from Twitter. We didn't initially understand the repercussions of our complaint, but now that we do, we have rescinded it. | |
| The whole affair serves to remind us that Twitter has come a long way in the past few years. | |
| Back in the olden days of 2010, Twitter was the host of another global conversation around a worldwide sporting event: the World Cup. People from 172 countries tweeted in 27 different languages, and the activity sent a new record for buzz on Twitter: 3,051 tweets per second. | |
| This was all before a handful of redesigns that helped propel Twitter to new heights. But most significantly, it was all before Twitter added analytics, multimedia capabilities and expanded tweets – the kind of things a company would want to provide in order to gather massive amounts of user information. | |
| Now, just a short two years later, Twitter has partnered with NBC for the London 2012 Olympics. The link-up has not gone as well as it might have hoped: its users slammed its newly minted partner for withholding live coverage of some events from American viewers, showcasing culturally tone-deaf journalists filing the complaint that sent Adams to Twitter suspension purgatory for publishing the email address of the NBC executive in charge of the coverage. (Twitter's terms of service ban the publication of "private" email addresses; there's some debate about how private a corporate email address at one of the world's biggest media companies can be.) | |
| Worse still, it was allegedly a Twitter employee who alerted NBC to the offending tweet. | |
| Much has changed since the World Cup. Along the road to London 2012, there were elections, natural disasters and Occupy Wall Street, all events that gave Twitter a sterling reputation as a bastion for free speech and a safe place for people to bash public figures and each other in the semi-anonymous privacy of their homes. And as we were rallying against whatever we wanted, Twitter quietly tweaked its terms of service as the din grew louder – the last revision was in June ago. | |
| For gathering real-time information, you'd be hard-pressed to find a more valuable tool. But this is a good time to remind ourselves that Twitter is a private company, complete with a massive set of guidelines about how its product is used. | |
| Tweeting the email address of a corporate exec who only just spoke on the record about NBC's potential for "enormous contribution to this conversation" on Twitter can be ruled as an abuse worthy of suspension. For a short time, Adams could count himself among the ranks of alleged slanderer Courtney Love and hack-happy Anonymous before having his account restored on Tuesday afternoon. | |
| Like Facebook or Google, other platforms popularly under the microscope for their evolving (or devolving, depending how you look at it) privacy and use policies, Twitter also has to figure out how to both leverage the flow of free information – and maybe even make some money of of it. | |
| And so it forges partnerships with corporate television networks. And it becomes cagey about sharing our pictures, our words and our activities with other hugely popular platforms – for instance, it'll be interesting to see what comes of its recent breakdown in communication with Instagram, a service in the business of sharing pictures. Sort of like Twitter. | |
| Twitter is an invaluable tool, but what it's not is a flag-waving, torch-bearing warrior for free speech – Twitter likes to say that the tweets must flow, but really that just means most of them. | |
| Twitter will defend users if it's a question of having to set a new, uncomfortable precedent for giving up data – legal battles waged on behalf of WikiLeaks and Occupy protesters prove this – but protecting itself when an unwieldy conversation about a network partner swings right out of its grasp is another thing entirely. | |
| Since 2010, the company's reach has skyrocketed, and many users have assumed that Twitter is a platform where speech of all types is protected, and that information of all sorts is freely circulated. It took an odd circumstance to remind us that it isn't. | |
| In the end, NBC's big hopes for "enormous contribution" to the Olympics conversation out of a partnership with Twitter came true. The problem – and a rookie mistake, really – was their joined hope to control it. |