In-House Counsel

Twitter General Counsel Acknowledges 'Mess Up' in Reporter's Banishment

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Twitter has done an about-face and reinstated the account of a reporter kicked off the website for tweeting the corporate email address of an NBC executive.

Twitter and NBC are partnering to share Olympics coverage, the New York Times report at its Media Decoder blog. Twitter suspended the email account of Guy Adams, a reporter for The Independent, after he criticized NBC’s tape-delayed Olympics coverage on Friday and encouraged like-minded people to send an email to the president of NBC Olympics.

On Tuesday, Adams’ account was reinstated, according to the Times and the Associated Press. Writing at the Twitter Blog, general counsel Alex Macgillivray, said the website “did mess up” when it “proactively” identified the tweet as in violation of the rules and notified NBC.

“This behavior is not acceptable and undermines the trust our users have in us,” Macgillivray wrote. “We should not and cannot be in the business of proactively monitoring and flagging content, no matter who the user is—whether a business partner, celebrity or friend.”

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