Did the NFL get Deadspin and SB Nation GIF Twitter accounts suspended?

A strange thing happened on Monday night as two major sports Twitter accounts were suspended.  The biggest headline is Deadspin’s account that reaches 882,000 people going poof.  SB Nation’s highly popular @SBNationGIF account also went bye bye.

With the MLB Playoffs in full swing and Major League Baseball’s notorious history of crackdowns on media copyrights, most assumed that MLB was to blame.  But in actuality, it looks like this is the doing of the NFL.  Gawker Media managing editor Lacey Donohue tweeted that the notice from Twitter indicated DMCA (Digital Media Copyright Act) complaints originating from the shield.

As we’ve maintained for some time now, the NFL is actually much more restrictive in video rights versus Major League Baseball.  MLB has at least shown some forward-thinking behavior in making videos available on their website and YouTube embeddable and utilizing GIFs on social media.  The NFL does none of that.  You’d have better luck figuring out what constitutes a catch in the NFL than finding a decent shareable video.  The NFL only just this year created a YouTube channel, and even then sharing is disabled by request.

If it is true that the NFL is behind the shutting down of these Twitter accounts, it’s just another slap in the face of fans who just want access to highlights.  Is Deadspin tweeting out a GIF of a great OBJ catch going to cause Roger Goodell’s world to come crumbling down?  Is SB Nation tweeting a GIF of a Jags player blocking against his team really a threat to the NFL’s business model?  C’mon, man.

It’s ridiculous that these billion dollar sports leagues fail to realize that the whole purpose of social media is being social, ya know, sharing.  And it’s ridiculous that Twitter is willing and able to go along with it and go against their ethos.  Oh, did I mention Twitter has a “multiyear strategic partnership” with the NFL?  (Insert tangential point here about all the garbage Twitter let’s run amok without doing anything while a six second Vine of a J.J. Watt sack gets you suspended.)

All the NFL is doing here is squashing free advertising of their product.  It’s no secret the NBA is so popular with young fans because they’re the one league that actually gets it when it comes to being forward-thinking in using social media and YouTube to their advantage. It’s almost like the NBA wants people to like them.  What a novel concept!  Now imagine Roger Goodell doing something designed to get people to like him or the NFL.  Good luck with that.