Althouse: "Twitter was forced to admit it breached the trust of its users when it apologized for suspending the account of Guy Adams..."

August 1, 2012

"Twitter was forced to admit it breached the trust of its users when it apologized for suspending the account of Guy Adams..."

"... a Los Angeles correspondent for the U.K.'s Independent newspaper."

16 comments:

chickelit said...: Mr. Adams was suspended from Twitter on Monday after he tweeted the corporate email address of NBC's Olympics president, Gary Zenkel, thereby allegedly breaching Twitter guidelines by posting personal information about other people without their permission.

I recall other recent incidences--the tweeting George Zimmerman's incorrect address, for example. Were those users also suspended?; 8/1/12, 9:54 AM
Dose of Sanity said...: Does that mean they breached the trust of the users BY apologizing?

Or does that mean, during the apology, they admitted it breached the trust of the users?

Either way, I'm of the mind the suspension was proper.; 8/1/12, 9:54 AM
Dose of Sanity said...: Were those users also suspended?

Most of those articles include the line "the user then deleted their account". But yes, they were or would have been suspended.; 8/1/12, 9:55 AM
Bryan C said...: "Either way, I'm of the mind the suspension was proper."

Why do you think it was proper? It's rather absurd to pretend a media executive's office email address is "personal information".; 8/1/12, 10:01 AM
Anonymous said...: Dozed off Sanity -

The reporter tweeted the corporate guy's publicly available email, from the company's own website, not a private email account.

The bigger issue was whether Twitter was bowing to pressure from NBC, because Adams was harshly criticizing NBC's coverage of the games. Coincidentally, NBC and Twitter had "partnered" for social media coverage of the games.; 8/1/12, 10:02 AM
edutcher said...: How dast somebody criticize MSLSD.

Like beating a dying horse.; 8/1/12, 10:03 AM
Brennan said...: The suspension was warranted. Adams posted someone's email address and encouraged his mob of followers to contact that person.; 8/1/12, 10:08 AM
test said...: Thank god the Olympics are run by a non-profit. I can't imagine how some profit seeking corporation would pervert this symbol of world unity.; 8/1/12, 10:09 AM
Brennan said...: The reporter tweeted the corporate guy's publicly available email, from the company's own website, not a private email account. Was it on the NBC Universal website? To my knowledge it was not public listed.; 8/1/12, 10:09 AM
Dose of Sanity said...: It was not a publicly listed e-mail address. However, NBC used a standard format for their email address (like lastname.firstname@nbc), so he figured it from there.

EVEN IF, it is publically listed, it still violates the terms of service for Twitter. The suspension is proper because he broke the reasonable rules of the website. It's not unlimited free speech on someone else's website.

And you can bet my liberal ass is usually one of the first to line up and cry free speech - but this is different.; 8/1/12, 10:15 AM
rhhardin said...: Bad publicity discovered, in other words.

I ought to cite Goffman on apologies, since this one exactly follows the template

``A further illustration of the difference between ritual concerns and substantive ones comes from occasions of accident in which the carelessness of one individual is seen as causing injury or death to another. Here there may be no way at all to compensate the offended, and no punishment may be prescribed. All that the offend[er] can do is say he is sorry. And this expression itself may be relatively little open to gradation. The fact - at least in our society - is that a very limited set of ritual enactments are available for contrite offenders. Whether one runs over another's sentence, time, dog, or body, one is more or less reduced to saying some variant of ``I'm sorry.'' The variation in degree of anguish expressed by the apologizer seems a poor reflection of the variation in loss possible to the offended. In any case, while the original infraction may be quite substantive in its consequence, the remedial work, however vociferous, is in these cases still largely expressive. And there is a logic to this. After an offense has occurred, the job of the offender is to show that it was not a fair expression of his attitude, or, when it evidently was, to show that he has changed his attitude to the rule that was violated. In the latter case, his job is to show that whatever happened before, he now has a right relationship - a pious attitude - to the rule in question, _and this is a matter of indicating a relationship, not compensating a loss_''

_Relations in Public_ ``Remedial Interchanges'' p.117-118; 8/1/12, 10:15 AM
ed said...: @ Dose of Sanity

"Most of those articles include the line "the user then deleted their account". But yes, they were or would have been suspended. "

So. Spike Lee's twitter account was suspended then?

Prove it.

captcha: fecula.

somehow appropriate.; 8/1/12, 11:34 AM
Anonymous said...: My mistake on teh publicly disclosed, but I still say it wasn't "personal information" sufficient to violate any term of service.

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.; 8/1/12, 12:17 PM
Brian Brown said...: chickelit said...
I recall other recent incidences--the tweeting George Zimmerman's incorrect address, for example. Were those users also suspended?

Of course not.; 8/1/12, 12:37 PM
Brian Brown said...: Dose of Sanity said...

Most of those articles include the line "the user then deleted their account". But yes, they were or would have been suspended.

Bullshit.

Spike Lee tweeted Zimmerman's (incorrect) address.

He was not suspended.

You live in a cocoon of ignorance and lies.; 8/1/12, 12:39 PM
iqvoice said...: Yes, the glaring non-example of Spike Lee looms large in this imbroglio. The Twittheads would have a lot more room for their false self-righteousness if it weren't for the obvious hypocrisy.

Suspend Spike Lee's acct!; 8/1/12, 3:02 PM