Not Acceptable - Business Insider

Twitter general counsel Alexander MacGillivray

Finally, Twitter has owned up to the huge mistake it made when it suspended the account of a journalist who used Twitter to criticize NBC, its partner in Olympics coverage.

Twitter general counsel Alexander Macgillivray, who has long championed policies to protect Twitter users' rights to free speech, has personally apologized to Guy Adams, LA correspondent for The Independent, and posted an explanation of the company's policies.

Macgillivray defended Twitter's Trust & Safety team, which suspended Adams's account after he posted an NBC executive's work email address. They did so properly, he said, acting on a complaint filed by NBC?but they did not know that colleagues at Twitter who were working with NBC had flagged the tweet in question and prompted NBC's complaint.

Here's what he wrote:

That said, we want to apologize for the part of this story that we did mess up. The team working closely with NBC around our Olympics partnership did proactively identify a Tweet that was in violation of the Twitter Rules and encouraged them to file a support ticket with our Trust and Safety team to report the violation, as has now been reported publicly. Our Trust and Safety team did not know that part of the story and acted on the report as they would any other.

As I stated earlier, 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, no matter who the user is ? whether a business partner, celebrity or friend. As of earlier today, the account has been unsuspended, and we will actively work to ensure this does not happen again.

No word yet on whether the Twitter employees involved will face any consequences for their actions.?

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-alexander-macgillivray-guy-adams-2012-7

tim howard scores nick cannon kidney failure consumer financial protection bureau casey anthony video recess appointment eastman kodak eastman kodak