Ever heard the name Guy Adams before this weekend? How about Gary Zenkel? No, me neither. Not until Twitter suspended the former, a British journalist based in LA, for tweeting the corporate e-mail address of the latter, the president of NBC Olympics — and created a tempest in a tea cup.
Not only was Twitter’s reaction completely disproportionate, there’s one major problem with it: he didn’t actually violate Twitter’s terms of service.
Adams, like a lot of us here on the West Coast, was upset that NBC had delayed broadcasting the London Olympics’ opening ceremony Friday night — so much so that the Pacific time zone was seeing it six hours after it actually happened (and three hours after our friends on the East Coast started tweeting like crazy about it.)
Plenty of critics vented their outrage at NBC’s policy (which included not putting the opening ceremony online, presumably to make more money from ads broadcast during prime time). Adams probably went a little further than most, calling the action “money grabbing” and decrying the network as “utter bastards.”
Then he wrote this fateful tweet: “The man responsible for NBC pretending the Olympics haven’t started yet is Gary Zenkel. Tell him what u think! Email: Gary.zenkel@nbcuni.com.”
The network complained, and Adams’ entire Twitter account was suspended Monday. The reason, he was told by a Twitter representative, was that he had violated Twitter’s terms of service by posting a private email address. NBC confirmed this in a statement to Mashable: “A user tweeted the personal information of one of our executives. According to Twitter, this is a violation of their privacy policy. Twitter alone levies discipline.”
Was that the case, though? Leave aside the question of whether a corporate email address counts as private. Let’s just assume that it does. Here’s what Twitter has to say about posting private information:
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.
Keep in mind that although you may consider certain information to be private, not all postings of such information may be a violation of this policy. If information was previously posted or displayed elsewhere on the Internet prior to being put on Twitter, it is not a violation of this policy. [Emphasis mine]
So if Zenkel’s email address was posted anywhere on the Internet prior to Friday, Adams is off the hook and his account should be restored. Right?
I’ll admit, the search is a wee bit harder than it should be. Currently, the first 8 pages of results for Zenkel’s email address on Google is clogged up with stories about Adams. (This is my point about creating a tempest in a tea cup; as a direct result of the suspension, Zenkel’s email has become one of the most public on the planet.)
But way down on page 9, we find what would have been the previous top result for Zenkel’s email address: this blog post from June 20, 2011, criticizing NBC Sports for removing the words “under God” from the pledge of allegiance during the U.S. Open.
Whatever you make of that post and the controversy it refers to, you can’t deny that it contain’s Zenkel’s email address, along with those of a long list of NBC Sports executives.
So Zenkel’s email address was “previously posted or displayed elsewhere on the Internet prior to being put on Twitter,” and Adam’s posting of it “is not a violation of this policy.” Game over, checkmate, or as Adams might say: howzat?
I’m not saying that this blog post is how Adams got the address; it has been noticeably absent from his defense. All his recent article in the Independent says is that anyone could construct that address from a basic knowledge of how NBC handles its accounts.
But you don’t even need to go that far. You don’t need to point out that the address is corporate, rather than personal. You need only point to Twitter’s own definition of its rules.
We’ve asked Twitter for comment, and will let you know what we hear back. But don’t be surprised to see Adams’ account reinstated — the company has a history of acting precipitously when it comes to account deletions, then reversing its decision later.
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