There has been a fair amount of criticism in the recent days with regard to Olympic coverage. The Twitter handle "NBCFail" has become an all-purpose hash-tag for gripes about NBC's time-delays and prime-time favoritism. But earlier this week, Twitter apparently felt one complaint had gone too far when they suspended the account of Guy Adams - a British reporter who included the email address of an Olympic executive in one of his complaints.
This move by Twitter generated a waterfall of backlash, as users felt that Twitter had violated its own free speech philosophy. How could the very same platform that promoted revolution and world-changing speech swoop in and blacklist posts of a certain ilk? (The irony, of course, is that the blacklisted reporter quadrupled his followers in the wake of the incident).
But it does seem that the hypocrisy Twitter is accused of has left them with a dilemma. Particularly with cyber-bullying gaining national focus and concern, it feels dangerous not to give Twitter any rope with which to monitor various content. Today it's a reporter, but what if tomorrow it is a 12-year old giving out the address of a frenemy? The idea of pure, unadulterated free speech is a lovely idea, but also fraught with tensions and questions about whether we risk too much by monitoring too little.
Here is an article from the NY Times addressing the same issue:
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/01/daily-report-twitter-learns-a-lesson/
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