A Twitter Employee Shut Down Trump's Account And People Loved It

#1

A Twitter employee deactivated Donald Trump’s personal account on their last day of work. The deactivation also came at a time when the social media network is under scrutiny for the role it played in spreading Russian propaganda during the 2016 presidential election.

#2

The move by the employee – who has not been named – meant that the president’s @realdonaldtrump account was down for 11 minutes.

The suspension of Trump's account suggests Twitter employees have access to the company's most prominent accounts.

#3

Initially, Twitter said, Trump’s feed was “inadvertently deactivated due to a human error.”

#4

Trump's account disappeared at around 6:45 p.m. ET Thursday. Anyone who navigated to his feed was given a generic blue landing page that read, “Sorry, that page doesn’t exist!”

#5

“The account was down for 11 minutes and has since been restored. We are continuing to investigate and are taking steps to prevent this from happening again,” the company said in a statement.

#6

But a couple of hours later, Twitter announced further investigation revealed “a Twitter customer support employee … did this on the employee’s last day.”

#7

A former senior employee told BuzzFeed News that "a lot" of employees have the ability to suspend a user's account and that fewer, in the hundreds, can deactivate one. The former employee described the system like a dashboard, meaning employees might not need engineering skills to suspend or deactivate an account.

"It's one click if you have the rights to access the tool," the person said.

The source noted that Twitter was aware that its suspension permissions could be abused but did not change its protocol.

#8

"There was a discussion that for verified accounts or high profile ones, there'd be special protections (i.e. "2 keys") but it was never implemented," the person said.

#9

Before Twitter’s statement, some speculated that Trump himself may have deactivated his account or he may have been hacked. He has been criticized in the past for having poor security standards, continuing to use an old, unsecured Android phone when he moved into the White House instead of trading it for a secure, encrypted device approved by the Secret Service.

#10

Trump, who has more than 40 million followers on Twitter, is known for his love of the medium.

“It’s like owning your own newspaper – without the losses,” Trump said of the social media tool in 2012.

#11

People happily questioned whether or not the lock was really a mistake. Others were just happy his account was locked in the first place.

#12

“In that moment, ‘Sorry, that page doesn’t exist!’ [Trump] truly became President,” one user wrote.

#13

“That was like .003 Scaramuccis,” wrote another user, referring to the president’s short-lived communications director.

#14

“If Trump’s Twitter is down, does this technically mean he’s no longer POTUS? I mean, it’s the only part of the job he pays attention to,” another said.

Twitter lit up with speculation, conspiracy theories, and plenty of sarcastic jokes about Trump’s brief exodus.