If you've been paying attention to the Olympics and you've got half a brain, you've probably noticed how shitty NBC's Olympic coverage has been - confusing tape delays, bad commentary, nationalistic program editing. Gus Adams, a Los Angeles-based journalist at British newspaper The Independent, has been a constant critic of NBC since the games began. As a result, he recently had his Twitter account suspended, after NBC filed a complaint that Adams tweeted the email address of the president of NBC Olympics, Gary Zenkel.
Whether or not Adams actually violated Twitter's privacy policy by broadcasting Zenkel's email is debatable - the grey points being that the address Adams tweeted was a corporate email addres, not a personal one, and that the email address was in identical form to other NBC address, meaning that it was hardly a hidden or encrypted address.
Clearly, NBC went filed the complaint because Adams was using his Twitter account as a powerful platform to criticize NBC. But what is shocking is that Twitter would jump on with NBC in censoring Gus Adams. NBC and Twitter can say whatever crap they want, but there's no doubt that this was a targeted attack.
The Olympics have been expected to be a watershed moment for social media, Twitter in particular, and Twitter is obviously making a play to protect what it feels is its long-term interest by protecting the image of the rich and powerful, at the expense of free speech and free conversation - you know, the things that make social media work?
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Follow on Ology: Bison Messink | 2012 Olympics
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