NBC: Twitter alerted us to Guy Adams’ tweets
Twitter has been thrown under the bus by NBC, which said Twitter first alerted the network to the tweets of a journalist, who was then suspended from Twitter.
Guy Adams, the Los Angeles correspondent for the British publication The Independent, had been criticizing NBC since Friday through both Twitter and articles. He was suspended Sunday after tweeting out the corporate email address of NBC Olympics President Gary Zenkel.
Initially, NBC said it reported Adams’ tweet to Twitter, which began the process that ended in Adams’ suspension.
Posting a user’s private information is a violation of Twitter’s terms of service, and Twitter requires that the user who was the target of the violation, or someone on behalf of the user, be the one to report the violation.
But the The Telegraph is now reporting that NBC says it was Twitter that first noticed Adams’ tweets.
NBC Sports’ Christopher McCloskey, vice president of communications, told The Telegraph that Twitter contacted NBC Sports’ social media department regarding Adams’ tweets, which then led to the violation report.
“Our social media dept was actually alerted to it by Twitter and then we filled out the form and submitted it,” McCloskey wrote in an email to The Telegraph.
If that’s true, it seems hypocritical of the social media site. Sure, NBC filed the report, but only after Twitter gave the network a heads-up about the tweets. It’s just one step away from clear-cut Big Brother activity.
I’ve contacted Twitter about the new claims but have not heard back. We will post an update should the company respond.
As for Adams, his Twitter account remains suspended. He said Twitter has told him that his account can be reinstated if confirms that he has read and understands Twitter’s rules, but at this point, Adams said promising Twitter he won’t do what he did again would set “a very ugly precedent.”
“If what NBC is saying is true, it undermines everything that Twitter stands for and is an absolute disgrace and will aggravate many millions of its users,” he told the Telegraph.
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