martes, 31 de julio de 2012

Twitter refuse to speak to The Independent's Guy Adams after suspending his ... - The Independent

I'd like to ask, for example, how exactly I am supposed to have broken their "privacy policy." Not least because that policy states that: "If information was previously posted or displayed elsewhere on the internet prior to being put on Twitter, it is not a violation."

The email address of Mr Gary Zenkel, the NBC executive at the heart of this bizarre affair, was posted on a blog established in 2011, by a campaigning organisation urging supporters to "boycott NBC." I found it there, prior to sending out Friday's supposedly-offending Tweet, in roughly 30 seconds via a website Twitter ought to have heard of. It's called Google.

I'd also like to ask how Twitter responds to widespread allegations that its decision to suspend my account was improperly influenced by its relationship with a commercial partner. The firm has, after all, been running a cross-promotion with NBC throughout the Summer Olympics.

Suggestions of a conspiracy have been lent weight by a media statement written late on Monday by Christopher McCloskey, an NBC spokesman. He claims his company's social media department only decided to complain about my Tweet: "after they had been alerted to it by Twitter."

If true (and McCloskey's statement has yet to be withdrawn or denied) it would seem that Twitter may have betrayed almost all of its supposed values in order to foster a commercial relationship. What could be more at odds with Twitter, and everything it stands for, than for the company to have engaged in censorship in the hopeful pursuit of a quick buck?

There's an easy way to end this charade. Once Twitter has clarified what really happened, and un-suspended my account, I can go back to doing my job on behalf of The Independent. They can meanwhile start to put this nonsense behind them. A fundamental truth of the internet era is, after all, that people have short attention spans. It will be soon forgotten.

Sadly, this can't happen. Not unless Twitter speaks with me. Until they do that, my suspension is currently in a sort of Kafka-esque limbo: the one, automated email I have received from the company's "trust and safety" department says that they won't consider re-instating my account until I agree that I broke their rules and promise not to do it again.

I don't agree that I did break their rules. And it seems Twitter won't talk about it.

At risk of sounding pompous, the very last thing I'm now willing to is to cave in to the company. Aside from being the wrong thing to do, it would set a dangerous precedent. One which might, in future, be used by Twitter to censor journalists or members of the public attempting to use their service to comment on something more important than the daily failings of an incompetent broadcaster.

That is why Twitter needs to, at the very least, now clarify their position.

The wall of silence emanating from the company is almost completely at odds with that in The Independent's Los Angeles bureau. In the 90 minutes has taken to write this article, I have received almost 200 emails, from either supportive members of the public, or media organisations wanting to discuss the case with me. The telephone has barely stopped ringing.

Unlike Twitter, or NBC, I welcome the conversation and have attempted to reply to every message. This policy of course has its drawbacks: for portions of the past 24 hours, including the small hours of the night, I have been forced to disconnect my landline and switch off all mobile devices in order to get a few hours of sleep. When you're in the eye of a new-media storm, it's difficult to disappear, even for a short time.

As for Mr Zenkel, he is no doubt also now aware of the inconveniences that come with being involved in a viral controversy. It's difficult to see how his email inbox will ever again be fit-for-purpose now that has become the subject of a rolling news story. He is, if you like, a victim of that old rule of public relations whereby a ham-fisted effort to suppress information ends up resulting in it becoming more widely available.

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