Thanks for that pointer - it didn't come up in the searches I tried.
While it would be fun to argue about whether "mentioned on some nutjob's web
site that Google doesn't list" is a good definition of "public", I think it
misses my point. That point is I believe Twitter already has an adequate and
pragmatic policy and I've not seen a good description of a better one that
takes account of their scale.
Their policy says:
Check if a complaint is in good faith (if not, or if complaint withdrawn, skip
to 4)
If it is, suspend the erring account pending remediation
Check with the user for either good cause ("already posted" for example) or a
commitment to not repeat
Re-instate user
It's no more reasonable to expect Twitter to exhaustively search the internet
and make a judgement call on privacy before responding to every complaint they
receive than it is to expect them to scan Twitter for violations. The fault in
this case does not appear to be the Trust and Safety team's actions, which
appear to have been conducted correctly (although perhaps slower than the lynch
mob wanted). It's that a team working on their NBC account acted improperly.
In a world of dodgy corporations, Twitter is one of the very few that I feel I
can still give the benefit of the doubt. I do hope that doesn't change; this
incident shook my confidence in them for a while.
S.
@webmink, +1 415 683 7660
On 31 Jul 2012, at 22:52, Jillian C. York wrote:
> And just to be clear, Simon, this is where Zenkel's email address was found:
> http://www.fidei.org/2011/06/boycott-nbc-removed-under-god-from.html
>
> The post is fron June 2011, thus the information was indeed previously posted
> on the Internet before being put on Twitter.
>
> On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 2:48 PM, Jillian C. York <jilliancy...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> Mashable says it's 8 Google pages in:
> http://mashable.com/2012/07/30/twitter-journalist-suspended/
>
> Twitter's rules contain this sentence: 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.
>
> If Twitter wants to remove that sentence from their rules, that's their
> prerogative, but until they do, they're full of it on this one.
>
> On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 1:47 PM, Simon Phipps <webm...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Where is Zenkel's e-mail on that page? I've yet to see a report that
> substantiates it was easy to locate on the web prior to this incident.
>
> But more to the point, Twitter appears to be coming clean here. Their policy
> says a bona fides complaint is met with preventative suspension, followed by
> reinstatement after review and, if necessary, assurances. For an organisation
> dealing with approximately infinite transaction levels, that seems about the
> only workable policy.
>
> In this case they assert that their NBC-attached team acted incorrectly by
> proactively reviewing traffic. They also imply that, had the Trust and Safety
> team been advised how the complaint arose, they would likely have acted
> differently. They have apologised for what they did wrong, left themselves
> free to continue to follow their (probably correct) policy and avoided
> commenting on the journalist's actual (borderline) behaviour.
>
> Since I don't see it in the thread below, here's Twitter's apology, which is
> worth reading & re-reading to get the implications as well as the details:
> http://blog.twitter.com/2012/07/our-approach-to-trust-safety-and.html
>
> S.
>
>
> On 31 Jul 2012, at 21:24, Bernard Tyers - ei8fdb wrote:
>
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > Hash: SHA1
> >
> > Hi Jillian,
> >
> > Thanks for explaining the details. Pardon my language but...FFS. This is
> > disgraceful.
> >
> > Adams used publicly available information like this:
> > http://www.linkedin.com/pub/gary-zenkel/3/569/126 and Twitter closed his
> > account?
> >
> > In which case, if I were Adams, I would release my legal attack hounds, and
> > sue Twitter under what ever legislation they could. Anyone from the EFF
> > Legal want to comment?
> >
> > That is disgraceful. Another example of why I believe Twitters
> > self-censorship "internal struggle" earlier this year was an easy out for
> > them.
> >
> > I hope Adams doesn't take the usual "we're sorry" excuse thats trotted out.
> >
> > Bernard
> >
> > On 31 Jul 2012, at 16:13, Jillian C. York wrote:
> >
> >> Bernard,
> >>
> >> Twitter's explanation was not that the statement was defamatory, but that
> >> Adams had posted private information. The email address he posted,
> >> however, is not private: it is available on NBC.com. That's the entire
> >> case.
> >>
> >> -Jillian
> >>
> >> On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 1:39 AM, Bernard Tyers - ei8fdb
> >> <ei8...@ei8fdb.org> wrote:
> >> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> >> Hash: SHA1
> >>
> >>
> >> (Slightly devil's advocate/contrarian POV)
> >>
> >> Interesting story, and Adams probably has a case but it never ceases to
> >> amaze me when people disconnect their "real world" brains from their
> >> "Internet" brains.
> >>
> >> I would be the first person to complain if someone's free-speech was taken
> >> away, however, if Adams has said anything defamatory in his Twitter
> >> stream, then he is still bound by "real world" laws.
> >>
> >> Just because I say something defamatory or libellous about person X on the
> >> Internet, doesn't mean that *IF* it's found that a "real-world" legal
> >> process cannot be executed.
> >>
> >> Most people using the Internet may not understand that, but I would have
> >> expected journalists to understand it.
> >>
> >> Is it illegal to suspend someones services for naming an executive of a
> >> media company for doing XYZ in the USA? I have no idea.
> >>
> >> If it is illegal, then people need to speak out against a ridiculously
> >> brain-dead law.
> >>
> >> If it is not illegal, people need to complain to Twitter for freedom of
> >> speech. Twitter need to rewind their equally brain-dead actions and
> >> apologise to the guy.
> >>
> >> Now, if he has said nothing "illegal" on Twitter, then IMHO, fire up the
> >> legal drones Guy. This I unfortunately have direct experience of. At this
> >> point it becomes (certainly in parts of Europe) a case of "who's got the
> >> bigger legal team".
> >>
> >> (My reasoning comes from Bruce Schneier's argument on laws specific to
> >> "cybercrimes". To paraphrase "Prosecution can be difficult in cyberspace.
> >> On one hand the crimes are the same.....The laws against certain
> >> practices, complete with criminal justice infrastructure to enforce them,
> >> are already in place....Fraud is fraud, whether it takes place over the US
> >> mail or the Internet.")
> >>
> >>
> >> On 31 Jul 2012, at 00:17, David Johnson wrote:
> >>
> >>>
> >>> http://sports.yahoo.com/news/olympics--critic-of-nbc-has-twitter-account-suspended-after-network-complains.html
> >>>
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