What’s Trending on Twitter? Itself, After an Ill-Thought-Out Suspension

Twitter has become the default forum for people when they have a complaint. Even when that complaint is about Twitter.

The company found itself at the center of a firestorm when on July 29 it suspended the account of Guy Adams, a British newspaper reporter for The Independent, after he posted complaints about NBC’s tape-delayed Olympics coverage. His posts included the e-mail address of Gary Zenkel, the head of NBC Olympics. On July 31, both Twitter and NBC backpedaled. While Twitter officials stress that the company generally does not monitor content, Alexander Macgillivray, Twitter’s general counsel, said in a statement on Tuesday that Twitter “did proactively identify a Tweet that was in violation of the Twitter rules and encouraged them” — NBC — “to file a support ticket with our Trust and Safety team to report the violation.” But the initial suspension already put both companies out of favor with many Twitter faithful. Out of solidarity for Mr. Adams, supporters also started posting the e-mail address of Mr. Zenkel, the NBC executive. They paired the hashtags #guyadams with #NBCFail, which has become an all-purpose tag for criticisms of NBC’s coverage. Some posters called the incident a “watershed moment” for social media and accused Twitter executives of censoring Mr. Adams’s account “to cater to corporate whim.” Others threatened to boycott NBC’s Olympics coverage.