Twitter apologizes for the way it suspended a journalist’s account

The social network suspended the account of a journalist, who tweeted the email address of an NBC exec. NBC and Twitter are Olympic partners. The media cried foul, the account’s been reinstated, and all sides have weighed in.

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Roughly 24 hours after Twitter suspended journalist Guy Adams from the site for tweeting the email address of an NBC executive, the social network reinstated his account.

Oh. My Twitter account appears to have been un-suspended. Did I miss much while I was away?

— Guy Adams (@guyadams) July 31, 2012

According to Adams, Twitter offered only a brief explanation, saying the complaint against him had been withdrawn, which is why it was reinstating his account.

NBC issued a statement about the incident, which The Wall Street Journal’s Christopher Stewart shared via Twitter:

“Our interest was in protecting our executive, not suspending the user from Twitter. We didn’t initially understand the repercussions of our complaint, but now that we do, we have rescinded it.”

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