Twitter undermines free speech. In a welcome about-face Tuesday morning, Twitter restored the account of journalist Guy Adams, who posted a series of critical comments about NBC's handling of the Olympics.
"Oh," Adams wrote in his first tweet since his account was suspended Sunday. "My Twitter account appears to have been un-suspended. Did I miss much while I was away? " Adams followed up by saying that Twitter informed him via e-mail that NBC had retracted its original complaint. While it's encouraging to hear NBC backed away - even if it required an enormous online backlash - it remains disturbing that Twitter revoked the account in the first place. Let's be perfectly clear: Twitter suspended a user for committing an act of journalism. The mind-boggling move undermines the San Francisco startup's credibility as a supposed advocate of open communications, and whittles away the goodwill of professional and citizen journalists who are the lifeblood of the service.
Baseless decision Speech vs. sponsorship. Twitter offers lily-livered apology for banning journalist. Twitter has reinstated the account of the journalist Guy Adams, who criticised the US TV network NBC's Olympics coverage and posted the public email address of one of its executives.
The social network also offered a flimsy apology of sorts, but not to Adams himself. Adams' account was reactivated last night. Adams then tweeted, "Twitter emails to tell me: 'we have just received an update from the complainant retracting their original request... Therefore your account has been unsuspended.' No further explanation given, or apology offered. " The offending tweet has been deleted.
In a blog post, the company put forth an aggressive defence of its private information policy, which it claims Adams breached. "We've seen a lot of commentary about whether we should have considered a corporate email address to be private information," writes the company's general counsel, Alex Macgillivray. I think this is weak and disingenuous. Our approach to Trust & Safety and private information. We want to take a moment to explain some of our general Trust and Safety policies and procedures, and address the specific case at hand that has unfolded over the past 48-hours (we normally don’t address matters pertaining to individual accounts for the privacy of the account, but here the relevant communications are now public).
When our Trust and Safety team receives a report from a user explaining that his/her private personally-identifiable information has been posted on Twitter, we investigate the issue and temporarily suspend the account if it is found to be violating our Guidelines & Best Practices. We make it possible for people to report posting of their private information because it may be used to harass or intimidate, and in certain circumstances may even be illegal. We have systems in place to address such behavior. Before the violating account is unsuspended, we ask the account holder to do two things: The Trust and Safety team does not actively monitor users’ content. Journalist's Twitter account restored after backlash. 31 July 2012Last updated at 16:42 ET Mr Adams posted a tongue-in-cheek message after his account was reactivated Twitter has restored the account of a journalist following a user backlash sparked by his suspension from the social network.
Guy Adams' account was blocked after he criticised NBCUniversal's coverage of the Olympic Games and posted the email address of one of its executives. Mr Adams said NBC had only complained about the message after Twitter alerted the broadcaster to it. Several users later retweeted the executive's email address in protest. Mr Adams said Twitter had told him that his account had been reactivated following "an update from the complainant retracting their original request". A blog post by Twitter's lawyer said it was standard practice to temporarily suspend an account that had posted private information which could be used "to harass or intimidate".
"We want to apologise for the part of this story that we did mess up," wrote Alex Macgillivray. Swapping comments. Twitter Apologizes for Mishandling Journalist's Suspended Account.