Transcontinental Race (London - Istanbul) - #TCRNo4

In one of the short youtube episodes there was some mention of the volunteers at CP1 not telling riders anything about who had already passed through the checkpoint and when because that was prohibited. I also read somewhere (not sure where now) that it wasn't allowed to tweet stuff about the 'race situation' to riders. This made me slightly anxious as I had just tweeted something that I thought was relatively innocuous about his relative position to hippy.

The only rules that could possibly relate to tweeting/social media reports etc are:

1. 3rd party support is prohibited. All food, drink and equipment must be carried by the rider or acquired en-route.
   
2. Riders must act in the spirit of self sufficiency and equal opportunity for all racers.
   

Gaining information from social media might be construed as 3rd party support, or at a push it might be argued to be outside of the spirit of self sufficiency, however in a world where most racers have mobile data connections and have regular access to both the track leaders site and twitter it seems implausible that this would contradict the "equal opportunity for riders".

Also, I'm unsure how any rider could be punished for the actions of fans following the race online who they may not even know ... I can tweet what I like but there is no guarantee that the rider would see it and or act on my suggestions, and it seems unfair to punish a rider for things that are completely beyond their control.

I'm not sure what the exact interpretation of the rules is, and I'll keep my comments on the safe side, but I hope that no one takes a curmudgeonly approach towards social media contact between riders and fans. I would hate for the social media interaction with the riders to be stifled... as a spectator it's one of the things that makes the race so compelling!