NBC Retracts Complaint, Guy Adams Is Back On Twitter | Hacker News Reader

NBC Retracts Complaint, Guy Adams Is Back On Twitter

techcrunch.com

87 pointsakshxy22 comments

In other words, Twitter can and may end your account on a whim, and unless you can drum up sufficient attention, you'll get PayPal'd.

How can Twitter still not have explained themselves? It makes them look extremely shitty, and they've had ample opportunity to come out of this looking like well-behaved guys. Maybe they didn't find it a PR priority.

Recall that this is not the first time something like this has happened: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2647130.

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EDIT 50 minutes later: They explained themselves: http://blog.twitter.com/2012/07/our-approach-to-trust-safety....

It's hard to dress up something like:

1. We were over conservative in this case since it related to our business partner NBC, and we didn't want there to be sour grapes between our companies.

2. NBC pulled our strings due to the Olympics partnership, and we had to dance to the tune.

Well, they gave it a shot: http://blog.twitter.com/2012/07/our-approach-to-trust-safety.... :)

I think they did alright. Still a chink in the armour, but they didn't come out of it looking like complete assholes.

Was Spike Lee suspended? NOT

Because he was politically correct and didn't put twitter revenue at risk.

Depends on who you are and what you say.

Cut it with the "politically correct" crap. What Lee did was tweet the information of an unconnected person who happened to have the same name as somebody who was suspected of a racially motivated murder. That has nothing to do with Political Correctness Gone Mad!

Twitter's explanation includes the word "apologize", but never states cleary what exactly they are apologizing for. Encouraging NBC to file a complaint? A complaint they still claim is justified? You can't apologize and say you did the right thing at the same time. "Sorry I hit you, but you had it coming."

They continue to defend the decision to suspend the account because it contained "private" information, claiming they can't make the distinction (big.boss at bigco.com, gimme a break...), even though by now various media have dug up plenty of incidents where publishing unambiguously private information has not lead to suspension.

And to add insult to injury: the account wasn't restored because Twitter reversed their decision, but because NBC retracted the complaint.

Seems to me like NBC giveth and NBC taketh away. Twitter merely apologizes for, well, what exactly? Being the messenger?

I'm having a hard time seeing any aspect of this in which Twitter was right.

Well, they're always going to be right in the "because we can" aspect.

The blog post clearly apologizes for contacting NBC about the tweet content.

"we do not proactively report or remove content on behalf of other users no matter who they are. This behavior is not acceptable and undermines the trust our users have in us. We should not and cannot be in the business of proactively monitoring and flagging content"

Also, the blog post says the account would have been restored as soon as Guy Adams responded to their email and acknowledged the TOS. Complaint retraction or not.

"we do not proactively report or remove content on behalf of other users no matter who they are."

Except when they do.

They also state that they neither proactively reported the content (they encouraged NBC to do so), nor did they remove it on behalf of NBC (they claim independent action based on their policy).

In other words, they deny having done what they consider not acceptable, so that can't be what they are apologizing for.

"I absolutely didn't hit you. I'm apologize. I never hit people, that would be unacceptable."

Doesn't make any sense. They just stuck the word "apologize" in between saying how they did nothing wrong and denouncing something they claim they didn't do in the first place.

So the account would have been restored if Guy Adams did as they told him. That's just the standard "he shouldn't have resisted arrest" line of deflection.

Stating how right you are and always have been is quite the opposite of an apology. It's not even a well constructed "non-apology apology", it's just randomly inserting the word "apologize".

It is called a "Non-Apology Apology" and is not new to this field: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-apology_apology

It's not an apology, it's a rationalization and a disclosure that Twitter has erected a classic legal fiction -- a Chinese Wall. In this case, Twitter has revealed two distinct groups that are not permitted to interact directly for reasons of decorum and liability. One polices the Twitter zeitgeist for memes that are distasteful to their partners (@nbcuni in this case), and the other reacts to breaches of Twitter's AUP.

Like with most abuses of corporate Chinese Walls, and why they are really just fictional constructs, there is a trampoline available for coordination -- in this case it's the partner itself. "We have encountered something you would find disparaging. Would you like to hellban? If so, please forward the following infringement to our unsuspecting moderation team.."

I find particularly nice that Twitter's own general counsel decided to spell it out in long form for the audience. It's a little like the ring leader explaining the physics supporting the acrobats after a performance.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_wall

* http://blog.twitter.com/2012/07/our-approach-to-trust-safety...

I never knew this kind of behavior had a name. Very interesting.

Twitter has released a statement on the issue: http://blog.twitter.com/2012/07/our-approach-to-trust-safety...

Twitter has been compromised. They may backpeddle all they want, but they have shown their hand. They will pull tweets and accounts when it serves their interest.

Twitter is not a public utility. If you want to put your namespace in the hands of a private company that offers their service for free, then by all means use them.

Organizations that want to retain control of their own namespace should host an OStatus compliant service on their own infrastructure.

Actually, between trademark law and libel laws that's not strictly true.

If you want to take to that level of absurdity, we should all be hosting our own DNS systems, so we aren't dependent on other entities.

With sufficient backlash at twitter, we can reduce the possibility of this happening.

DNS is distributed. There's only one Twitter.com

See the problem in that?

Furthermore, there isn't just one DNS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_DNS_root

Twitter's 'Olympic Moment' will go down as their jump the shark moment possibly.

Maybe a new meme is when a useful/cool service sells out/gets taken over by the suits/turns on developers it is the 'Olympic Moment' in that services lifespan, representing that it is all downhill from here.

Have NBC (aka NoBloodyClue) made a official statement saying they retracted?

Also given this story: http://www.wetpaint.com/network/articles/justin-bieber-posts...

Then I'd have to ask - by what standards twitter operate on as his account is still active.

maybe if the internet went into uproar about it then sanity would prevail upon that one as well.

But glad to see Mr Adams restored for a crime he did not commit.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com