Twitter's chance of ever becoming a method of delivering news content have been scuppered by the fact that it is censoring users when requested by broadcasters.
According to the Guardian, the outfit has suspended a British journalist who dared to post critical tweets of NBC's Olympics coverage. Independent hack Guy Adams was censored after a complaint from NBC.
According to the Independent the social media network received thousands of angry tweets after the Twitter feed of Guy Adams of the Independent disappeared.
NBC has confirmed that it had complained to Twitter after Adams published the email address of one of its senior bosses. It claimed that it was a violation of Twitter's privacy policy.
The address was of Gary Zenkel, the president of NBC Olympics, and Adams suggested that people should complain to him about the TV network's delayed broadcast of the opening ceremony of the Games.
Adams pointed out that the email was not a private one but a corporate account.
Shutting him down appears to be an attempt from NBC to silence his coverage.
His main theme has been that NBC were money grabbers for refusing to show the opening of the Olympics live because it wanted to maximise its advertising revenue in prime time. The US got to see the opening ceremony six hours behind the rest of the world.
When NBC did broadcast, the outfit made several offensive remarks about the British including one where a commentator admitted that he had not heard of Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the British inventor of the world wide web.
Still, we are surprised that some US journalists even know where the UK is.
When Twitter users get abusive and resort to bulling in their tweets, they get suspended
TEXT: from a message by the man with a PHD who was suspended for using Twitter in an abusive way. He wrote:
Regarding my ongoing “suspension” from Twitter, which shut down my account after I published a message critical of @NAME.
The site claims I broke its rules because I in a Tweet posted on Friday I called @NAME insane and schizophrenic, when in fact he is neither. In fact, he is a professional journalist and I was wrong to use abusive language when I do not even ''know'' the man.
My tweet was wrongheaded and abusive and contained language that one should not use lightly, which I did use lightly. For that I apologize and hope I can get my Twitter privileges back soon
Plenty of people do agree that I broke said Twitter rules. And many have also pointed out that Twitter’s actions seem a bit rum, because the popular, but currently-not-very-lucrative site just so happens to be shite in my opinion.
This evening, an ominous development: a Twitter message to me said it was the micro-blogging site – and @NAME – that was responsible for initiating the complaint that lead to my suspension in the first place.
I’d be fascinated to hear how Twitter explain or justify this.
In the meantime, I’d also quite like to get back on Twitter.
The site’s “trust and safety” department has contacted me to explain how this can happen.
“If you would like to request your account to be restored, please respond to this email and confirm that you've read and understood our rules,” reads their message.
Nick,
the Twitter rules no email address allowed to be given out in abusive bullying way, period. re ''Adams pointed out that the email was not a private one but a corporate account.''
Adams is a crybaby.
"Except, it’s not. Felix Salmon at Reuters points out that Twitter’s rules contain no such prohibition."
Maybe Felix Salmon didn't find the rule, but I did:
Posting another person’s private and confidential information is a violation of the Twitter Rules.
Some examples of private and confidential information are:
•credit card information
•social security or other national identity numbers
•addresses or locations that are considered and treated as private
•non-public, personal phone numbers
•non-public, personal email addresses
https://support.twitter.com/groups/33-report-abuse-or-policy-violations/topics/148-policy-information/articles/20169991-private-information-posted-on-twitter#
Though I suppose it could be argued that a "public figure" e-mail address is not really "private information", (scare quotes intended).
"Did I miss much while I was away?"
Answer: No! Go back to sleep, Guy!