Twitter & Facebook Want You To Follow The Olympics... But Only If The IOC Gives Its Stamp Of Approval
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It is something of an unfortunate Techdirt tradition that every time the Olympics rolls around, we are alerted to some more nonsense by the organizations that put on the event -- mainly the International Olympic Committee (IOC) -- going out of their way to be completely censorial in the most obnoxious ways possible. And, even worse, watching as various governments and organizations bend to the IOC's will on no legal basis at all. In the past, this has included the IOC's ridiculous insistence on extra trademark rights that are not based on any actual laws. But, in the age of social media it's gotten even worse. The Olympics and Twitter have a very questionable relationship as the company Twitter has been all too willing to censor content on behalf of the Olympics, while the Olympic committees, such as the USOC, continue to believe merely mentioning the Olympics is magically trademark infringement.So, it's only fitting that my first alert to the news that the Olympics are happening again was hearing how Washington Post reporter Ann Fifield, who covers North Korea for the paper, had her video of the unified Korean team taken off Twitter based on a bogus complaint by the IOC:
Twitter took down my video of the unified Korean team entering the stadium, on the IOC's orders. pic.twitter.com/umffjawRqG— Anna Fifield (@annafifield) February 9, 2018
I couldn't even post it at all on Facebook pic.twitter.com/RNSzsxSthM— Anna Fifield (@annafifield) February 9, 2018
edit: Policy/auto___twitter___facebook_want_you_to_follow_the_olympics____but_only_if_the_ioc_gives_its_stamp_of_approval.wikieditish...