Twitter Suspends SB Nation And Deadspin Accounts For Using Sports GIFs

An account belonging to SB Nation dedicated to tweeting out GIFs of sports highlights was suspended on Sunday, but that suspension was related to college football GIFs, not those of NFL footage.

Twitter temporarily shut down a pair of prominent accounts run by sports news websites over the weekend for posting short clips of NFL and college football highlights. In an email, Cook informed the media outlet that the company received “18 takedown notices about 16 tweets”, all of which came from the NFL. SB Nation says it’s working on getting its account reinstated. All of the tweets included GIFs, and all of the requests were filed by the NFL. “The tweets in question are still up, but Twitter has of its own accord stripped them of the allegedly offending GIFs”, the editor said.

The main Deadspin account was down roughly for an hour before it was re-activated around 8:00 Monday night.

The dust-up also comes as the National Football League makes an increased digital push, including a deal to bring more game highlights to Twitter. Twitter has not responded to requests for comment.

According to Politico reporter Peter Sterne, the league’s takedown requests were numerous.

It is unclear exactly why the Twitter account was suspended and why the suspension was later lifted.