There’s been a good amount of complaining around NBC’s delayed broadcasting of the London Olympics, especially on Twitter, where the hashtag #NBCFail has been prevalent since the Opening Ceremonies. But Guy Adams, a reporter for The Independent, was so deeply upset by NBC’s broadcasts that on Friday he tweeted the email address of NBC President Gary Zenkel, encouraging his followers to send Zenkel notes about the displeasure the Olympics coverage was causing them.
Twitter, which is partnering with NBC in its Olympics coverage, swiftly suspended Adams’ account. But on Tuesday, Twitter reinstated his account, and Alex Macgillivray, the company’s general counsel, apologized for “proactively” identifying Adams’ tweet as violating Twitter’s rules, and for notifying NBC.
“This behavior is not acceptable and undermines the trust our users have in us,” Macgillivray wrote on the Twitter Blog. “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.”
Read more at the ABA Journal and the New York Times.
See below for more InsideCounsel stories about Twitter:
How in-house lawyers are using social media
Court decides that tweets are not private, can be subpoenaed
What not to do when reviewing job applicants’ social media pages
