Twitter, Badminton, Doping, and Codes of Conduct at the Olympics

For most viewers of the 2012 Olympic Games, the thorniest technical questions involve the fractions of a second that divide a gold-medal winner from silver. But the London Olympics also involve rulemakers and administrators who do the heavy lifting of keeping the Games on track in areas like social media, performance-enhancing drugs, and other codes of conduct that all Olympians have promised to follow.

Which means that next to the headlines about medal counts are stories about athletes who have been disqualified for doping violations, competitors who have been expelled post-tweet, and some Olympians who have been kicked out for violating perhaps the most fundamental tenet of the games: Do your best.

On Wednesday, the Badminton World Federation ejected eight doubles players from China, South Korea, and Indonesia for trying to lose on purpose. The federation charged them under sections 4.5 and 4.16 of the organization’s Players’ Code of Conduct: “not using one’s best efforts to win a match” and “conducting oneself in a manner that is clearly abusive or detrimental to the sport.”

“You cannot allow a player to abuse the tournament like that, and not take firm action,” Craig Reedie, International Olympic Committee vice president and former badminton federation chief, told the Associated Press. “So good on them.”

Earlier, two Twitter-happy athletes got themselves kicked out for comments they made on the social media service. Greece’s Olympic Committee expelled triple jumper Voula Papachristou from the team after she mocked the country’s African migrants in a tweet—a comment the committee found “contrary to the values and ideas of the Olympic movement.”

Ditto for Swiss soccer player Michel Morganella, who was banned by his home country’s Olympic Committee, as well. Morganella followed up Switzerland’s 2-1 loss to South Korea with a racist, violent tweet about his opponents. Hence this piece of advice that American diver Nick McCrory relayed to USA Today: “If you wouldn’t say it in an interview, you probably shouldn’t tweet it. That’s my rule of thumb.”

But the big social media story of the week isn’t about athletes getting banned for their Twitter usage—it’s about how a journalist critical of NBC’s Olympic coverage got his Twitter account suspended, raising hackles about the relationship between the social media company and the broadcaster.

Last Friday, journalist Guy Adams encouraged Olympics viewers to complain to Gary Zenkel, NBC’s president for Olympic Coverage, tweeting Zenkel’s corporate email address in the process. Twitter then suspended his account, an uproar ensued, and Adams’ account was restored.

That wasn’t all. On Tuesday, Twitter general counsel Alex Macgillivray apologized for the suspension and tried to explain how Adams’s tweet set off alarm bells about a possible violation of the company’s policy—which places restrictions on tweets that contain someone else’s personally identifiable information without that person’s permission.

But Twitter policy also states that the company doesn’t monitor tweets for violations. Rather, a user must file a complaint with the company. And that’s where things got sticky, Macgillivray’s post acknowledges:

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.

Adams continues to question why his account was suspended—and, in The Independent, offers a rundown of celebrities who posted the personal information of others and appeared to suffer no consequences.

So, who’s gotten a pass so far on near-snafus at the 2012 Games? The answer is: Nike. Over the weekend, The Guardian reported that London 2012 organizing committee would not pursue legal action for an ad campaign that appeared to barely toe the ambush-marketing line.