Account Suspension Prompts Olympic Twitter Debacle

The hashtag #twitterfail is trending today above #NBCfail, after Twitter suspended the account of an outspoken critic of NBC’s coverage for more than 48 hours. Twitter and NBC have a partnership agreement for the Olympic Games. Anchor Aaron Schachter speaks with media writer, blogger and teacher, Dan Gillmor.

Anyone following the Games on Twitter will have come across the hashtag #NBCfail.

Well, a new trending tag is #Twitterfail.

Many have lambasted NBC-Universal for its coverage. Many are also angry at Twitter, for suspending the account of an outspoken critic of NBC for more than 48 hours.

That critic is British journalist, Guy Adams; Los Angeles correspondent for the British paper, The Independent.

He was suspended after NBC complained that he’d revealed private information by tweeting the email address of an NBC executive.

But Adams defended himself, saying the address was already publicly available.

Twitter has a partnership agreement with NBC to promote the games and the tweets of NBC personalities.

Media writer and blogger, Dan Gillmor, teaches digital media entrepreneurship at Arizona State. He says the incident was shocking, but that people should remember that the owner of a platform can do anything with what people publish, including take it down.

Gillmor also says, “we have to recognize that our interests may not coincide with corporate interests.”

Twitter does not comment on individual cases. But according to Guy Adams, Twitter emailed him to say NBC had retracted its complaint, and therefore his account was unfrozen.