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Olympic Twitter Trolls
Tuesday 31st July 2012 | Osh
Today two twitter accounts have been suspended for apparent trolling, both of these cases were intertwined with the Olympic Games (they are a sporting event that our city are hosting, in case you hadn’t noticed). One of the accounts was owned by a seventeen year old from Weymouth, posing under the twitter name Rileyy69 and the other account was owned by British Journalist Guy Adams.
Rileyy69 came to attention after tweeting Diver, and British medal hopeful Tom Daley abusive tweets when Tom failed to produce a medal in Monday’s Diving Syncro. Tweets included a message stating “You let your dad down i hope you know that.” Daley’s father lost his battle to cancer in May last year.
Guy Adam’s removal from twitter comes after his criticism of U.S channel, NBC’s, coverage of the Olympics. NBC, in a move to increase advertising revenue, refused to air Olympic events such as the USA men’s basketball match, Saturday’s men’s swimming final and even the Opening Ceremony live, instead moving them to primetime spots.
Guy Adam’s, in protest of this, began a twitter trend: #NBCfail, and published the NBC exec responsible, Gary Zenkel’s, email address. This email address was not a private email, this was a public email, available to find on the internet and published in the same format as that of all NBC employees.
Guy Adam has defended his move stating:
“If it now displeases Mr Zenkel to get emails from those rightly-angry customers, then he is surely in the wrong job.”
So Twitter’s equal reaction to very different ‘crimes’ begs the question of how its protection of people from bullying and online abuse, as in the case of Tom Daley, removes its original purpose as a platform from which voices can be heard? As a platform for freedom of speech? There is no doubt that Rileyy69 should be removed from the site, but the case of Guy Adam’s as he himself argues in the Independent, is not abuse or cyber bullying, but a use of the site for the American public to complain about an injustice. To complain that the service they are being provided from a company, is not good.
In giving Adam’s the same punishment as Rileyy69 it suggests that Twitter groups them together. They both tweeted with the same purpose: complaining about a professional not doing the job they wanted them to do. But they presented their opinions in a very different manner: and that is what Twitter needs to register as the difference. How we put together our one hundred and forty characters.
Mallory McDonald
