In the ongoing challenges of Twitter as providing too much information and acting a spoiler for the 2012 London Olympics, the latest strike against it comes from allegedly sharing private information.
Guy Adams, the Los Angeles bureau chief for The Independent, had been suspended from Twitter on Monday after he tweeted (from @guyadams) the email for Gary Zenkel, the President of NBC Olympics.
Oops!
According to Mashable’s Stephanie Haberman, Twitter emailed Adams and said that his “account has been suspended for posting an individual’s private information such as private email address, physical address, telephone number, or financial documents.”
NBC Sports also took action by filing a complaint with the social media site. An network spokesperson said via the Wall Street Journal’s Neal Mann, “We filed a complaint with Twitter because a user tweeted the personal information of one of our executives. According to Twitter, this is a violation of their privacy policy. Twitter alone levies discipline.”
Twitter responded to the news by stating they neither comment on individual accounts nor suspensions. In an email exchange obtained by The Wall Street Journal from Guy Adams, Twitter wrote that his account had been suspended because it was “a violation of the Twitter Rules to post the private and confidential information of others.”
However, Adams argues that the address he published for the executive was in fact public and available to “anyone with access to Google” because it is a corporate email; he doesn’t believe it falls under private information.
The journalist also responded to Twitter by stating, according to Mashable, that it was “Quite worrying that NBC, whose parent company are an Olympic sponsor, are apparently trying (and, in this case, succeeding) in shutting down the Twitter accounts of journalists who are critical of their Olympic coverage.”
But there may be more to the email story. Over the last few days, Adams has been tweeting negatively about NBC’s coverage of the Olympics. During the opening ceremony, he constantly tweeted criticisms of the opening ceremony, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Adams also recently wrote an article for The Independent that included criticisms of the coverage noting that viewers had been forced to “suffer some of the most invasive advertising in the history of television,” and that NBC has determined to “blithely ignore the advent of the internet era.”
According to Mashable, Adam’s Twitter stream can still be found on MuckRack. He also said to Mashable that he is “still trying to get to the bottom of it.”
Here’s an article written by Adams on Monday detailing the story.
BREAKING: Muhammad Ali wins boxing Light Heavyweight gold medal in Rome
— NBC Delayed (@NBCDelayed) July 30, 2012
The Twitter account that has posted the above tweet is also criticizing NBC and The London Olympics in a humorous way.
