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Twitter Employee Blamed For Deleting President Donald Trump's Account (npr.org)
A reader shares an NPR report: With the push of a button, an employee at Twitter accomplished for a brief few minutes on Thursday what President Trump's closest advisors have reportedly been trying unsuccessfully to do for months: shut down the seemingly never-ending tweet stream at @realDonaldTrump. Perhaps it was an act of civil disobedience, or maybe just a "take this job and shove it" moment, but shortly before 7 p.m., the president's personal account kicked back the error message "does not exist." By 7:03 p.m., it was up and running again and within about a half-hour, new presidential tweets were forthcoming. The folks at Twitter leapt into action to find out what had happened: "Earlier today @realdonaldtrump's account was inadvertently deactivated due to human error by a Twitter employee. 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. Two hours later, the company said, "Through our investigation we have learned that this was done by a Twitter customer support employee who did this on the employee's last day."
Where your data can get deleted by a click of a button by a disgruntled employee and even the fucking president of the United States can't be spared nor can his data be restored in less than 11 minutes.
Imagine if you weren't the president, would they even care?
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What we've discovered is that Twitter CSRs can whack any account whenever they want, for whatever reason they want. They have no real oversight whatsoever, so when this juvy decided to do something they just did it and left the building.
Besides being an asshole move, it shows a distinct lack of internal controls.
So somehow reporting that someone shut down Trump's twitter account is Trump bashing? It's a simple matter of fact.
Oh that's right - I forgot. Any facts that you guys don't like are fake news/someone's agenda/whatever so you don't have to face them.
Let me tell you something, my friend. Reality doesn't give two shits what you think about it.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
No, the real question is why they restored it so quickly. I would have loved having a week or two without having to hear about the latest Trump rant on CNN.
The amazing part of this episode is that Twitter discovered the disgruntled employee's action and rectified it in 11 minutes. How did they find out so quickly? Either the employee bragged or the action set off a trip wire, meaning that particular account was closely monitored by Twitter. I doubt that even the White House would be able to get Twitter to act so quickly once POTUS or his staff discovered that the account was broken.
1. That's not how free speech rights work. You are protected from the GOVERNMENT preventing you from speaking. This is a private company. They can censor anything they like (including the president, although they might have to retain his tweets, because of legal reasons).
2. I'd really like to understand your logic for how a service that depends on other mediums for transmission could possibly be a "common-carrier". They don't provide service. They aren't a telephone company. They aren't a wireless company.
As a note, the reason for the Fairness Doctrine being removed was Cable News like CNN. The Fairness Doctrine was intended to make sure everyone had a voice on the big three channels. With Cable, people aren't locked in to ABC, NBC, or CBS. You can get news from CNN or any other company that can get a cable presence. Then with the 'net, there are even more options with FoxNews and lots and lots of other sites like BBC and Al Jazeera.
The problem with this though is folks start to gravitate to their bubbles. Don't like hearing a Conservative or Liberal spin on the news? There are sites that cater just to your ideology. You don't hear other viewpoints and worse, the viewpoints you do hear are much stronger. And even worse are News Aggregators like the ones on devices (phones and tablets) and like Facebook where they're weighing what you click on and configuring your feed to give you more of what you indicate you like enough to read. Without a conscious effort to go to alternate sites, you get into a feedback loop.
Over the years I've found myself getting into that loop and having to work at broadening my news to include sites outside my ideology. The bad part are the aggregation sites aren't good at providing just news. I'll go to different sites and then have the "For You" sites include opinions that can be quite offensive, to the point that I have to block them from my views.
[John]
Shit better not happen!
I would have loved having a week or two without having to hear about the latest Trump rant on CNN.
Then maybe you should watch less CNN. Do you really think that their non-stop anti-Trump ranting is in any way going to be modified by whether or not he's just tweeted something? If they can go on for a solid day about which shoes his wife wears on the way to get on an airplane, your hopes for them shutting up their one-note editorial focus for a week or two because of ANY change in communication method by Trump is just a silly fantasy.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Oh, deleting accounts of blacks and gays is acceptable? I seem to remember a recent court case about a wedding cake for a gay wedding that LEGALLY decided differently.
Good to know racism and sexism is ok, as long as you are a private company. Thanks for sticking up for racists!
Yes, I will stick up for racists. One has every right to be a racist, bigot or whatever. They have a right to speak their mind. But we also have the right to not listen to him - to censor him: tell him to get off of private property for instance, like a website.
Now, does the racist have a right to walk into a synagogue and start pontificating of the evils of Jews? Nope.
Does Twitter or any other media outlet have to allow the Nazi to share his views? Nope.
Do you have a right to tell him to STFU? Yep.
Does the government have a right to tell him to STFU? Nope.
Yeah, this. It's probably the most famous Twitter account, which happens to be a technology firm, so News for Nerds kind of qualifies. I don't think TFS is very biased either, it's quite factual. The only thing it fails to mention is if said rogue employee will be charged, but I'd be amazed if they aren't...
Jail time incoming for this illegal misuse of corporate services and computers.
That is extremely unlikely to happen. If a user cannot sue Twitter for deleting his account, who is going to bother with the ex-employee?
As far as "illegal misuse", this employee was apparrently granted access to manage user accounts. Unless he circumvented security measures to get that access, he didn't break the law. Firing an employee for misuse is certainly reasonable, but Twitter doesn't need to bother if he already left the company.
I anticipate no legal consequences. Is 11 minutes without Twitter even justification for a torte?
Another libtard is about to realise the world isn't like their faggy echo-chamber they create for themselves.
Ah, so we have a reason for your rush to authoritative, punitive judgment: partisan politics.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
I never hear of these so-called "Trump rants". I don't watch CNN or any TV news outlets. (All the stories are virtually the same. It's just the characters, the places, or the causes/issues that are different. That's all. I ignored the Media for 6 months once, on purpose, and then listened again. Every story was the same just different characters, places, and clauses/issues. Just the same bovine scat. Like in the "Casablanca" film, at the end, when the Vichy French officer instructs his junior police officers to round up the "usual suspects". American Politics is exactly the same -- just a drama to keep the uninformed from living their lives. These sycophants want all the attention focused on theirselves but they don't desire it. But you have fallen into the Trap!)
>> this was done by a Twitter customer support employee who did this on the employee's last day.
Was it their last day before they did it?
I'm glad you see things so black and white. I completely agree that some random religion's website is completely theirs to screw with. Twitter is not a religion, it is a company with a corporate charter. They get economic perks like tax incentives and limited liability. They are hugely influential in our national discussion. I think the public/private line is sufficiently blurred that the analogy begins to fail. If Twitter decides to tilt the decision a certain direction, it has a large impact on society. I think they probably should be able to pick and choose the kind of information that appears on their site, but then they cannot run and hide behind "common carrier" type arguments when it is convenient for them. Short of illegal posts, they become editors when they pick and choose what appears on their site.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Every story was the same just different characters, places, and clauses/issues. Just the same bovine scat. Like in the "Casablanca" film, at the end, when the Vichy French officer instructs his junior police officers to round up the "usual suspects". American Politics is exactly the same -- just a drama to keep the uninformed from living their lives.
That's because most "news" has to be entertaining, in order to attract people's attention and keep it long enough to expose them to an ad, ask them for a pledge, or persuade them their tax money is well spent (depending on what country you're in). So they broadcast most often what they think is going to grab the most attention.
There's actually two kinds of news. The first kind you watch only because your job depends on it. This news is boring: farming reports, commodity news, financial news and market reports, that kind of thing. You won't see Trump's Tweets there, but unless you have some reason to watch/read/listen to this stuff, you won't.
Then there's the other news that you watch because it's at least part-way entertaining. Informative, sure, but politics, disasters, and videos of kittens being rescued from a tree are all entertaining, and the people in these businesses are in competition with each other to get more viewers. They all look the same? No surprise - in media and politics, you tend to work the same formula that succeeded in the past. FWIW, Trump's Tweets attracts attention, so infotainment news splashes them up like they're the next damn moon landing. Followed by an important message from Polident denture cleaner (keeps your teeth from being stinky and gross). Mission accomplished.
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
Shutting down free speech with violence while wearing masks and literal blackshirts is not fighting fascism. It is fascism!
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Nitpick: I thought that everybody would wish that, but liberals think society should intervene directly to force that goal, while conservatives think society will be better off as a whole if this is left to the actions of private organizations and individuals. Am I correct?
First they silenced the losers,
And I said nothing, because I was not a loser.
Then they silenced those with bad attitudes,
And I said nothing, because I didn't like their attitude.
Then they silenced the trolls,
And I said nothing, because trolls are bad, m'kay?
Then they silenced the guys with an actual, if controversial, point,
And I said nothing because I didn't notice.
Then ... You can see where this is going, right?
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-