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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."

9 of 377 comments (clear)

  1. The REAL question is by the_skywise · · Score: 5, Interesting

    How many other accounts have simply been disappeared by a twitter employee that didn't like the account that never got noticed and remained deleted because they weren't the President of the US?

    1. Re:The REAL question is by gnick · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Trump's tweets are the only reason I have Twitter installed. They're a national embarrassment, incredibly reckless, and I wish they'd stop. I REALLY wish they'd stop. But, since they won't, I make the most of them. They're a window into the confusing mind of a very powerful man. We always know exactly what he's thinking. And, for better or worse, so does anyone else. In the sense that he's accurately reflecting his thoughts, he's more honest there than anywhere else. Even when his tweets are wildly inaccurate, I'm convinced that he believes what he tweets when he tweets it.

      --
      He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
    2. Re:The REAL question is by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      He can only pardon himself for federal offenses. Criminal charges from a state would still stick.

  2. Re:What's wrong with that? by MightyYar · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It means that some arbitrary process is in place to censor any point of view. Get the wrong censor, and your own pet cause could be next. It's all fun and games until a Scientologist is the censor.

    --
    W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
  3. Re:What's wrong with that? by dreamchaser · · Score: 2, Interesting

    You are correct, aside from the ad hominem. In this case, however, it was not the business that deleted the account. It was a rouge employee on his last day. Big difference.

  4. Re:Twitter CSR doesn't need manager approval by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ^^^ This. Fortunately, every company that does business with Twitter just crapped their pants too. I would expect Twitter's sales department will have fun fielding a hundred thousand revenue-neutral "how can I be sure some minimum wage rep doesn't delete [brandname] during our Superbowl commercial (or other campaign)" conversations.

  5. Twitter should retaliate by naming the person by DeplorableCodeMonkey · · Score: 3, Interesting

    They got lucky that the person was smart enough to not delete the account. There are plenty of political radicals in SV that would have not been so rational. Since the threat of firing was already gone, the only way Twitter can punish them now is to publicly name the person who did this. That is also a good way to make it clear to other employees that if they follow in this person's footsteps, Twitter will not hesitate to nuke them in defense of its interests and users.

    Like it or not, Trump is not just some user. He is almost a full blown asset with a monetary value to Twitter because he drives so much user engagement. Had the person deleted the account, Trump would have had a few options. One of which is Twitter's nightmare: move to Gab. Right now, Gab only has a few hundred thousand users and the neo-Nazis retards have a loud and proud presence there. I can guarantee you that if this SJW had deleted the account, Gab would have grown at least an order of magnitude within a few days. With 90 days, it would probably have at least 5M, if not 10M, users. Twitter would have also lost a huge source of engagement which would drive the conversations there down even further.

    If Twitter management cares about shareholders (we know they don't, as Dorsey is still in charge), they'll take swift and brutal action against this person and their career.

  6. Re:Are all the editors on Slashdot liberal SJW's? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Is rather be like the "intolerant" antifa than what they stand against.

    The Nazis hate black people, brown people, Jews, Muslims, gay people, transsexuals, women, foreigners and so on.

    Antifa hate the Nazis.

    Those are not equivalent.

    By defining "Nazis" an anyone who doesn't agree with Antifa, Antifa ARE Nazis.

    Look at it this way:

    Both Antifa and the Taliban respond to statues they don't like in the same way: tear them down.

    Both Antifa and Mussolini's Fascists stated that they will violently attack people simply for preferring different economic policies.

    When an organization has that much in common with the Taliban and Mussolini's Fascists - and masks themselves just like the KKK - there's a problem with that organization.

  7. Re:Who gives a shit? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Can we please, just once, have a discussion about the good and bad of censorship from a non-governmental agency, without someone immediately going "X is not the government, end of discussion, lalalalaicannotthearyou"?