Facebook says it mistakenly blocked gold medallist sprinter Elaine Thompson-Herah, the 800M and 100M Olympic champion from Instagram.
Thompson took to her Twitter account sating that she had been blocked on IG for posting videos of her victorious double races because she “did not own the right to do so.”
However, a Facebook spokesperson later said that while the content was removed, the suspension was wrongly applied.
Thompson-Herah defended her Olympic titles from the Rio de Janeiro 2016 Olympics over the two distances in Tokyo, making it four Olympic gold medals from two Games. But her attempt to share her Tokyo competitions with her 310,000 followers on Facebook-owned Instagram appeared to have backfired.
She later posted on her Instagram Stories that the block had been cleared with smiling emojis.
According to Reuters, the International Olympic Committee strictly guards its broadcasting rights, which generate billions of dollars for the organisation from global TV networks, particularly NBC in the United States.
The IOC’s social media guidelines say athletes “are encouraged to share their experiences with their friends, family and supporters via social and digital media”.
But it says they cannot put up “Olympic Games content containing audio/video of the field of play”.
“Rights Holding Broadcasters (RHBs) have the exclusive rights to broadcast the Olympic Games,” the IOC told Reuters.
“This includes distribution on social media, where athletes are invited to share the content provided by the RHBs on their accounts but cannot post competition content natively.”
“Should that occur, the removal of such content from social media platforms happens automatically.”
Thompson-Herah is due to compete in the women’s 4×100 metre relay on Thursday and, should Jamaica qualify for the final, on Friday. She had won a silver medal with her team mates in Rio.
