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Twitter Boots Critic of NBC For Tweeting Exec's Email Address

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the was-that-wrong? dept.

netbuzz writes "Guy Adams, a Los Angeles-based correspondent for The Independent of London, had his Twitter account suspended today, allegedly for having violated a Twitter privacy policy when he tweeted the workplace email address of an NBC Sports executive. The Internet is abuzz with accusations – no make that assumptions – that Twitter muzzled Adams because Adams was tweeting up a storm of protest over NBC's coverage of the Games. However, Twitter says it was because it prohibits the tweeting of 'non-public, personal email addresses.' Whether Adams did that or not appears debatable." Update: 07/31 17:48 GMT by S : Adams's Twitter account has been reinstated.

19 of 104 comments (clear)

  1. HMMM by nopainogain · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Comcast owns NBC... Comcast supports NDAA, NBC aligns itself with twitter which tries to silence whistleblower. I miss freedom.

    1. Re:HMMM by zlives · · Score: 5, Insightful

      freedom will be televised during highest paid ad time slots

  2. Hey Twitter, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    #fuckyou

  3. the email add. was out there. by gl4ss · · Score: 4, Interesting

    that's the debate if you're wondering.
    if it wasn't public, how did he have it? personal relation? but no need for that since it was published on a blog.
    and it's an email address for a fucking nbc exec, not for some secret agent...

    and why it's a story is that there's moneyflow between olympics, nbc and twitter due to them doing big co-operation around the games.

    and why nbc sucks is that they edited the opening ceremony and showed it time delayed(the reasoning is that americans are too stupid for the un-edited version, basically).

    --
    world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
    1. Re:the email add. was out there. by Goose+In+Orbit · · Score: 5, Informative

      Worse still - they went to commercial during the tribute to the victims of the 7/7 London bombing. Can you imagine how much trouble they'd be in for doing the same to the 9/11 victims?

    2. Re:the email add. was out there. by Blue+Stone · · Score: 5, Informative

      first.last@nbcuni.com

      That's the template used by NBC for their CORPORATE emails. Replace "first.last" with the name of any exec and that's the amazingly private super-secret personal details the journalist had his account killed for.

      The NBC executive was called Gary Zenkel.

      This post would be a violation of Twitters TOS!

      --
      Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
    3. Re:the email add. was out there. by MickyTheIdiot · · Score: 5, Informative

      welcome to the Streisand effect!

      I bet their exchange server is choking as we speak. There's little doubt it's exchange, either...

    4. Re:the email add. was out there. by fiannaFailMan · · Score: 5, Insightful

      and why nbc sucks is that they edited the opening ceremony and showed it time delayed(the reasoning is that americans are too stupid for the un-edited version, basically).

      It wasn't just that. It was the incessant inane commentary when they should have shut their traps and let the image do the talking. It was cutting out some of the best parts. It was spoiling the carefully crafted continuity with a constant bombardment of commercials. It was not knowing/giving a shit who Tim Berners Lee was and leaving it to the audience to google him; how ironic is that?

      All of the people griping about how "bad" the opening ceremony was have two things in common: 1 they're American, and 2 They watched it on NBC.

      I watched it on the BBC's feed and was blown away by it. I was a bit shocked when I started seeing comment threads from yanks complaining about it being "boring", I was wondering if they'd watched the same show as me.

      --
      Drill baby drill - on Mars
    5. Re:the email add. was out there. by MickyTheIdiot · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Again.. this ignores the fact that no one can find this rule in the TOS.

    6. Re:the email add. was out there. by nedlohs · · Score: 3, Informative

      It's an auction. What sort or retard would turn down a $5 billion bid and instead give it to the guy bidding $50 million?

      And the $5 billion was for 4 Olympic games. NBC paid $2 billion total for two: the 2010 winter and the 2012 summer games.

    7. Re:the email add. was out there. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Again.. this ignores the fact that no one can find this rule in the TOS.

      I am sure it is in the new TOS as of right now. Pray that Twitter don't alter the TOS any further.

    8. Re:the email add. was out there. by biodata · · Score: 3, Funny

      What's even worse is they went to Ryan Seacrest

      --
      Korma: Good
  4. Twitter had no choice by l0ungeb0y · · Score: 3, Informative

    It was a lot simpler to just wipe out the user's account than merely remove the offending Tweet. Because by removing the Tweet, Twitter would themselves have been in violation of their own privacy policies by having tampered with the User's Account and would be enacting censorship -- which is bad. And after all, User Accounts and the data they contain are virtual and have no actual value. Frankly, I wonder why people still use crap like private email and other open messaging services when we have all these wonderful Monolithic Services like Twitter and Facebook to provide all our communication needs.

    1. Re:Twitter had no choice by cpu6502 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Yeah it did have a choice. Since this is NOT a "'non-public email address" but in fact posted on a public NBC website, twitter's rule was violated. The stupid corporate behemoth can't even follow its own rule. It has all the brains of a tree, or rock, or building (i.e. none).

      --
      My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
  5. FSCK the olympics by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The Olympics take advantage of tax payers by building arenas that never pay off, they don't compensate athletes, the stars of their show, for their hard work and all the while, the IOC gets billions from ads and tv deals.

    The athletes work for no pay, the city builds the stadiums and provides staff and security so what do the IOC spend their $$$ on???

    Its a huge scam, screw them!

    1. Re:FSCK the olympics by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The Olympics take advantage of tax payers by building arenas that never pay off, they don't compensate athletes, the stars of their show, for their hard work and all the while, the IOC gets billions from ads and tv deals.

      The athletes work for no pay, the city builds the stadiums and provides staff and security so what do the IOC spend their $$$ on???

      Its a huge scam, screw them!

      It's worse than that, I'm afraid.

      Like a mythological vampire, the Olympics can only come inside if invited(in fact, given the competition each round, you pretty much have to grovel at the IOC's feet to get one). So, if your city finds itself in the unfortunate position of hosting an Olympic event, you are witnessing the end-stage political rot where whoever is in charge has (in the face of considerable competition) to knowingly invite a hugely expensive debacle to town in order to drum up some PR and have an excuse to farm out a bunch of sweetheart contracts on top of whatever part of the city doesn't meet their approval.

      If the Olympics were some sort of outside force, imposed by IOC occupation troopers, it would actually be less pernicious. Alas, it is a parasitic organism that shows up to produce the especially grotesque symptoms of uncontrolled unaccountability in local governance, rather like all those exotic cancers and fungal infections that show up in immunocompromised patients.

      This isn't to say that burning down the IOC would be a bad thing, of course, plenty of blame to go around; but your only real solution involves wheeling in the guillotine at the municipal level...

    2. Re:FSCK the olympics by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      The Olympics is using ZFS, no need for fsck.

  6. Incidentally... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It is probably worth mentioning that Twitter was/is NBC's 'partner' for coverage of the Olympics... That's sort of a salient detail.

  7. bad summary by MickyTheIdiot · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It's not even clear if posting the email is against their TOS even if it is private... and it isn't private. Their email naming scheme is clear and the full address has been published before.

    This is corporate asshattery.... there isn't any doubt about it to anyone but the poster. NBC and Twitter are partners and they muzzled a critic for a trumped up infraction.

    There hasn't been discussion about it here, but the whole NBC coverage is an idiotic, jingoistic, and technical mess. Read #nbcfail on twitter yourself (I know... slashdotters are too cool for twitter) and you'll see it yourself.